FROM THE ALTAI TO THE ILI 415 



heavy pile of household belongings heaped against the 

 wall that kept it standing, and afforded us shelter. The 

 morning light revealed the havoc which had been 

 wrought. Some of the yurts had been blown over intact, 

 and lay on their sides like discarded bee-hives, while 

 others had been completely demolished, and this in 

 spite of the fact that a yurt, owing to its shape and con- 

 struction, is of all tents the most perfectly adapted to 

 withstand wind. Our own flimsy tents had, of course, 

 been demolished at an early hour, and an uncomfortable 

 night was spent in holding on to various belongings." 



But that was in summer, and under the leeward side 

 of a mountain-range. I leave the reader to imagine 

 what the buran would have been in the trough of the 

 Dzungarian Gate, carrying possibly frozen snow, or 

 sand, and in the winter, when the atmosphere with no 

 wind is scarcely endurable, and when the temperature 

 runs down to —20° and —30° Fahrenheit. Stories are 

 told of shepherds and their flocks being killed off after a 

 few hours' exposure to the winter burans, it being the 

 chief concern of the nomads of the district to find 

 shelter from these terrific wind-storms. 



The Dzungarian Gate is a defile about six miles wide 

 at its narrowest point, and forty-six miles long, con- 

 necting Southern Siberia with Dzungaria. It forms a 

 natural pathway from the plateau of Mongolia to the 

 great plain of North-western Asia, and is the one and only 

 gateway in the mountain-wall which stretches from Man- 

 churia to Afghanistan, over a distance of three thousand 

 miles. On the west, the Ala-tau drops suddenly from 

 peaks above snow-line to the level of the floor of the 

 depression, 700 ft. above the level of the ocean, — the 

 lowest altitude in the inland basins of Central Asia, with 

 II — 7 



