86 
NARRATIVE. 
animals for crossing this desert. Yaks stand the cold 
better, and are more enduring than horses, but they 
will not eat grain, probably because they have never 
been taught. And unless grass is met with and 
halts are made every second or third march, the yaks 
become exhausted and die on the road. Once an 
exhausted yak lies down he seldom rises again. 
Horses, on the other hand, are almost independent of 
grass if sufficient grain can be carried, but even under 
the most favourable circumstances it is always ad- 
visable to have a number of spare horses. It is 
also necessary to take a large supply of shoes and 
nails, and to have with the camp a man who can 
shoe horses. This is another disadvantage of yaks, 
for they are very difficult to shoe, and when once 
they get footsore they must be abandoned. On the 
return journey we brought two Bactrian camels the 
whole way from Yarkand to the Panjdb, and they stood 
the journey remarkably well. Near Yarkand we met 
a trader with a number of laden camels, and on our 
return to Le we again saw these same camels after 
they had completed the journey : they were all 
in excellent condition, and seemed to have stood the 
work remarkably well. 
VI. HILL YARKAND. 
HEAD OF THE LOWER KARAKASH TO SANJU. 
The Karakash river takes its rise about fifty miles 
to the west of where we had encamped on July 21st, 
on the Lingzi Thang plains. It then flows through 
a desert valley, with very rugged mountains on either 
side, for about a hundred miles in a northerly 
direction, to a point five miles above where we were 
now encamped. This first part of the river, which 
