454 SOUTHERN DZUNGARIA 



back, eyes on the ground, and apparently with no thought 

 beyond his feet. He had slouched all his life, across 

 Asia and back again, and would probably continue to do 

 so until he could slouch no longer. He was clothed 

 almost entirely in sheepskins and felt ; even his trousers 

 were made of sheepskin — with the wool inside, and these 

 our interpreter persisted in calling " mutton-trousers." 

 These caravan-men are of a hardy breed, their faces 

 burnt to the colour and consistency of a walnut by 

 constant exposure to the fierce heat, biting cold, and 

 continuous winds of the Gobi. They have a character- 

 istic movement peculiar to their calling : the body is 

 bent slightly forward, and they drag their legs with an 

 effortless scrape at a pace which would kill an English- 

 man ; so slow, indeed, that they seem scarcely to move 

 their feet at all, and so dully and so hopelessly that it is 

 easy to understand why Asia has lagged behind in the 

 world's progress. It is nearly always possible to pick out 

 these men amongst the cosmopolitan crowd in a Central 

 Asia bazaar. The monotony of their lives would be hard 

 to exaggerate ; it consists of trudging at the head of a 

 string of camels for months over a barren country — desti- 

 tute of towns or habitation, with every feature of which 

 they must be thoroughly familiar. All they have to 

 look forward to is a short stay in the neighbourhood of 

 a town, while the bales are being collected for another 

 journey. The only occupation we saw them indulging 

 in was the spinning into coarse twine of the camels' -hair, 

 which they collected in the spring when the animals cast 

 their long, woolly winter-coats. 



The work of the men, however, must be heavy, in 

 spite of their slowness on trek, for the entire caravan 

 has to be loaded and unloaded every twenty-four hours. 



