BOATING ADVENTURES 
417 
clockwork, the east wind came piping over the pass of 
Kara-tash and down the valley of the Ike-bel-su, wreath- 
ing the landscape in a misty haze. With the exception of 
our immediate surroundings, every object became lost to 
sight. The shore faded away in both directions. Right 
before me sky and water melted together. Not a glimpse 
of the mountains that overhung the lake met my searching 
eye. I could easily have imagined I was standing on the 
brink of the boundless ocean. 
On one occasion the mist caught up the artist’s brush, 
and used it with magnificent effects, or rather contrasts. 
We were returning from an expedition to the Ike-bel-su. 
Its valley was filled with murky mist, which surged up the 
lower slopes of the Mus-tagh range, darkening every hollow 
in their flanks. And so swiftly, so silently, did it boil up 
and up, that the mountains speedily vanished from sight, 
like the image on an unfixed photographic plate when ex- 
posed to the light. While the lower regions were thus 
enshrouded in thick gloom, the towering summits of the 
Mus-tap-h-ata shone out brilliant and vivid, like electric 
o 
lamps streaming across the billows of the enrolling mist. 
The sun sank behind the mountains ; instantly it was 
twilight. Higher and higher crept the mist up the moun- 
tain-sides. The topmost peaks of the great mountain, and 
the snowfields glancing like silver mail on its shoulders, 
were bathed in a scarlet glow, shading away to a glorious 
fiery yellow. Less and less grew the sunlit altitudes. 
With ill-omened ease and haste the envious shadows 
mounted up the faces of the precipices. One moment 
the crowning summit glittered out over the deluge of 
mist ; then paled — a pyramid faintly, indistinctly outlined 
against the dark background of the sky ; then, at the end 
of a few swift-ebbing moments, it too was engulfed in the 
unfathomable ocean of mist. 
And then came the beautiful pictures of the night. The 
mist vanished. The moon floated up above the mountain- 
tops, pale and cold, moving with frigid majesty through the 
dark blue sky, strewn with its glittering stars. The hollow 
flanks of the mountains were draped with long scarf-like 
1.-27 
