240 ROUTE TO DIN-YUAN-ING. 



The immigration of birds which beoran in AuQust 

 increased in September, as many as eighteen kinds 

 having made their appearance in the early part of 

 this month. But the birds of passage mostly keep 

 to the valley of the Hoang-ho, and only visit the 

 desert of Ala-shan in small numbers. Here they 

 fare badly, for many of them perish from hunger or 

 thirst in the wilderness, and I found numbers of 

 dead thrushes, which dissection proved to have 

 evidently died from starvation. My companion 

 once picked up in a dry ravine near the axis of the 

 lofty Ala-shan mountains, a mallard so exhausted 

 as to allow itself to be caught in the hand. 



The summer heats were now over, and we could 

 march without CTeat fatio^ue. The loose sands, 

 ranged in small mounds like those in Ordos, sur- 

 rounded us with a boundless yellow plain which was 

 lost in the horizon. The road led through bushes 

 of zak, frequently crossing the ridges of sand. The 

 fate of the traveller who loses himself in these track- 

 less wastes would indeed be terrible, especially in 

 summer, when the desert becomes as hot as an 

 oven. 



Fifty miles before arriving at Din-yuan-ing the 

 bare sands recede to the right of the road, which 

 now continues through a plain of clay and sand for 

 the most part, covered with rare clumps of the field 

 wormwood, called by the Mongols sharaldja, and 

 used by them for fuel. This plain extends as far as 

 the Ala-shan mountains, which rise like a huge ram- 

 part, and may be seen 60 miles off; snow lay on 



