222 TO THE KARAKORUM. 



desert now swelling out laterally, then diminishing and 

 towering aloft to most unnatural proportions, all the time 

 swayed and agitated by glimmering waves of chiara- 

 oscura, defying the eye in its attempt to define the forms 

 immersed in this ever- oscillating, quivering, atmospheric 

 flood. Startled by this alarming vision, a dozen or so of 

 antelopes came trooping down, giving our party a wide 

 berth. And having now been some four hours on foot, 

 and there being appearance of water at hand, we deter- 

 mined to halt and make an attempt on the antelope, 

 pending the arrival of the far-behind Kamal with the 

 breakfast. 



The leaders of the caravan came up, with some thirty 

 horses, and we exchanged courteous greetings, and received 

 confirmatory intelligence of the merits of Sugheit, both 

 as a place of refreshment and shikar. One of the 

 sandagurs carried in front of him a large bundle of 

 clothing containing a child a boy, I imagine looking, 

 poor little chap ! pale and sick with cold. It was an 

 uninteresting, mealy-faced child, with a very marked 

 obliquity of vision, but I felt much compassion for him ; 

 he wore such a look of patient suffering. They vanished 

 in space : and we, leaving Abdool in charge of the horses 

 what a desolate, forlorn creature he looked thus forsaken ! 

 set off on our excursion. And far we wandered, but 

 only on our return saw animals far in the distance 

 perhaps of the herd before seen, or may be others when 

 we turned our steps towards our living mark just visible, 

 an undefined, quivering heap. 



The remainder of the caravan hove in sight, a seem- 

 ingly long string of horses, also exaggerated and palsied 

 by the flickering medium through which we looked on 

 them. I sent off Subhan to bring Abdool and Co. to a 

 point we would make for, intersecting the road, and so 



