410 
THROUGH ASIA 
Poor fellow ! he had never been in a boat in his life before, 
and had never heard of sea-sickness. He fully believed 
his last hour had come. 
The Kirghiz crowded the nearest shore on horseback 
and on foot, expecting every moment to see the boat go 
down. But happily we succeeded in keeping her afloat ; 
and it was with a feeling of indescribable relief that we 
at last saw she was gliding over shallow water. Safe and 
sound, but wet through, we finally reached the shore, 
hurried to camp, and kindled a huge fire, at which we 
slowly dried our clothes. 
Our first sounding expedition was thus a complete 
fiasco. The only discovery we made was that the drift- 
sand contributed, in as great a degree perhaps as the 
glacial mud, to the levelling up of the lake-basin; for, 
while the glacier-streams only develop energy during the 
summer, sandstorms are a common occurrence all the 
year round. In the night, however, the drift-sand which 
drops from the passing storms is blown aw'ay across the 
slippery surface of the ice. Several times on the lake we 
were enveloped in clouds of sand so thick that we could 
hardly make out the shore-line ; and in the evening, after 
the storm had subsided, the water was still muddy. The 
everlasting mutton broth actually crunched between our 
teeth when we took it at supper. 
The following day we accomplished three good lines of 
sounding without any further adventure ; and on the 8th 
set out from the western end of the southern shore. We 
began work late in the day, so as to let the wind settle a 
little first, and drifted gently across the lake, dispensing 
with the sail so as not to disturb the accuracy of the 
soundings. Hour after hour passed ; then dusk came on, 
and it was quite dark when we reached shallow water. 
We were only a couple of hundred yards from the 
northern shore, when suddenly a dead calm set in, and 
the next moment a violent gale from the north, which 
tossed the boat back into the lake, as though it had 
been a mere nutshell. We felt that now we had the 
whole lake before us, and the night. Row as we might, 
