io6 CHINESE TURKESTAN 



reach. Anyway it was not good enough, as there 

 might be even worse places further on, and I had no 

 desire to form the chief part of a funeral, so with 

 some difficulty I turned round and made my way 

 back again. By now we were both rather done, 

 and turned our faces uphill again in a silence more 

 eloquent than words, having to go back nearly all 

 the way we had come down before we could get on 

 to the ridge. After that it was comparatively plain 

 sailing. Durji, I may say, was a Koksu man, and 

 did not profess to know Akjas ; hence the error of 

 trying the valley. The moral of this is that the 

 ridges are usually easiest, and should be used to 

 descend, unless the other way is known to be prac- 

 ticable. Happy were we to reach the ponies and 

 our long -deferred lunch at five o'clock ; but our 

 troubles were not yet over. Camp was somewhere 

 down the main valley, but how far we knew not. 

 It soon got dark, but still we rode and rode without 

 seeing the longed-for fires. Having no food and 

 only light wraps, I was not at all prepared to sleep 

 out, so we stuck to it, and at last, while riding along 

 a path some way up the western hillside, we saw a 

 fire below. Hurrah ! Down we went, leading the 

 ponies through a pine wood, and tumbling over dead 

 trees, quite regardless of bruises for was not 

 supper at hand ? till the bottom was reached, and 

 then we could not find the fire ! We shouted and 

 shouted, but got no answer, so, concluding that it 



