FROM KULJA TO KUMUL 425 



storms accompanied by a hard frost ; by the first 

 week in December the IH River was frozen stiff, and the 

 whole land was frost-bound. Snow occurred every 

 ten or twelve days, the intervening period bringing 

 bright and sunny weather with a very low temperature. 

 So long as the air was still, the 50 degrees or so of frost 

 were not much felt ; but when the wind rose the elements 

 were too severe for man to face. 



Across the frozen landscape moved occasional natives^ 

 Kalmuks and Kirghiz, wrapped in great sheepskin coats 

 and wearing fox-skin headgear, or Chinamen in quilted 

 jackets and quaint, but most practical, ear-caps. For 

 the most part the inhabitants of this dreary land had 

 gone into winter quarters, — hibernating, in fact, — and 

 would not appear again until the following spring. The 

 groaning ox-wagons gave place to silent sledges, and men 

 used this easy mode of transport to move their grain and 

 merchandise ; consequently, the noisy bazaars of Kulja 

 — trade centre of the Hi Valley — became silent owing to 

 the wheelless traffic. 



The great trade-routes of the world are now almost 

 entirely superseded by railways or lines of steamships. 

 The tea-trade of China is carried to Europe by ship, 

 and men go to Mecca by railway. In far-distant and 

 exceptionally isolated regions alone are the old caravan- 

 tracks still in use as they were a thousand years ago. 

 It is to Asia, with her civilization of immense antiquity, 

 that we must look in order to find this state of affairs ; 

 Asia, where men are still " plunged in thought," still 

 heedless of the West, where commerce and transport 

 are still solely dependent upon beasts of burden, where 

 the old routes, which always carried the trade between 

 Europe and Far Cathay, are still in use, where the same 



