Across the Roof of the World. 



1868, and others, and he much prized a special letter of thanks 

 from the Viceroy of India for services rendered to British 

 travellers. He was deeply affected when 1 told him the fate 

 of various explorers he had met in years gone by and now long 

 since passed to their last account, whilst much interested in 

 others risen to fame and fortune and still in the land of the 

 living. 



I left the Khona Shahr at six in the evening, halting five miles 

 out, at a place called Mazar, merely a caravanserai, but as it was 

 pitch dark when we arrived I saw nothing of it. The road was 

 now partly through scrub and cultivated land, and over numerous 

 watercourses, muddy and heavy going for the carts. We were 

 bogged in one of these channels, and a Beg I had with me dis- 

 tinguished himself by beating a wretched wayfarer for not coming 

 to our assistance. 



I reached Jom, a little village twenty-five miles from Aksu, 

 at eight in the morning, and camped the far side of the 

 bazaar under some trees. The local Amban sent me a present 

 of sheep, but as he was only a minor official I did not think it 

 necessary to call on him. I went on in the afternoon over the 

 same vast plains, desolate and seemingly limitless, stretching 

 away into the unknown, where man has never yet set foot, and 

 presumably does not wish to. 



Outside Kara Yulghun I forded the Muzart River ; it was 

 not difficult, the water being low and the current moderate. 



It is a desperate country to travel in, this land of Chinese 

 Turkistan, immense sandy plains, occasionally scrub-covered, and 

 truly a veritable Sahara. The water found is so brackish as to 

 render it almost undrinkable, and even in the form of tea the 

 disagreeable taste is strongly apparent. 



At 4 o'clock on the morning of the 17th I left for Yakka Arik, 

 an oasis in the desert, where I changed horses. We forded three 

 rivers between here and Bai, arriving in the latter place, a 

 small town with a petty Amban, late in the afternoon. Though 

 these rivers were successfully forded, it proved an operation 



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