UP THE ALA'I valley 141 
were people from the aul, bringing us hay and fuel. 
When they came up, they strongly advised us to remain 
where we were till the following morning. 
Early on the 6 th March we began to make preparations 
as if for a military campaign. Before daylight four men 
started on camels to trample a path through the snow- 
drifts. The Kirghiz told me, that some winters the snows 
were a great deal worse than they were that winter. 
Sometimes they were piled up higher than the top of 
the tent, and intercommunication between the auls had 
to be kept up by means of yaks specially trained to do 
the work of snow-ploughs, in that with their foreheads 
JAN ALI EMIN RIDING THROUGH THE SNOW 
and horns they shovel narrow tunnels or passages through 
the snowdrifts. 
The task we had immediately before us was to cross 
the river Kizil-su — by no means an easy thing to do. 
Except for a deep rapid current in the middle, about ten 
or a dozen yards wide, the stream was sheathed in ice, 
and the ice covered with heavy masses of snow. More- 
over the edges of the ice were unsafe, being greatly eaten 
into by the water. It was not at all a pleasant sensation 
to sit on my horse’s back when he came to the edge of 
the ice above the ford and gathered himself together for 
a leap into the water. If he slipped or fell, I felt I was 
certain to get a cold bath, which in the temperature that 
then prevailed would have been anything but agreeable , 
worse than that — it would have been dangerous, seeing 
