244 ON THE FRINGE OF THE DESERT 



a most nauseating production (written by a woman) 

 and it was a great relief to turn to " David Copper- 

 field " and other of the great master's works. It 

 was in the Gobi Desert that I first learned really 

 to appreciate Charles Dickens. 



Soon after leaving Lanchow we passed into a 

 land of dusty hills, bare and verdureless. Dust 

 was everywhere. The houses were made of it ; 

 the road lay smothered in it ; the people, covered 

 with it as they were, but typified our mortality 

 and dusty origin. It seemed that we had come 

 to the world's end and that the next dusty corner 

 would mark the sudden cessation of the finite 

 and a step off into infinite space. For that is 

 the chief impression which is felt on the mind of 

 the traveller in Asia infinity. Civilisation and 

 the handiwork of man cramp and confine to 

 one dead level. Here everything was boundless, 

 immense, indefinite. We knew not where our 

 journey would end, nor its duration. Nothing 

 was certain save uncertainty. Beneath our feet 

 the road stretched endless, and overhead was the 

 cold and cloudless sky. 



At eventide, with the lengthening of the 

 shadows, everything around us melted into one 

 grey half-tone. The hills near at hand were, it 

 is true, as brown, as dusty and as uninteresting 

 as ever. But the greater the intervening distance 

 the greater the power of that wonderful magician, 

 twilight. Softly glowing violets and greys covered 

 their nakedness and hid their shame in wonder- 

 ful clothing. Their harsh outlines were softened 

 into the impalpable barrier of an enchanted land. 

 The knolls of frozen mud, bleak and bare, which 



