5H 
THROUGH ASIA 
After that we continued to move towards the south-east, 
keeping between the mountains which overhung our last 
camping-place and an isolated ridge which lay to the east. 
Our route lay across a hard level steppe, thinly overgrown 
with grass, where travelling was unusually easy. The 
camels marched in regular time, and their bells tinkled 
in strict accord with their paces. At the foot of the 
eastern ridge there was another lake ; and to our amaze- 
ment we perceived three horses grazing on its banks. 
It was now plain there were people in the neighbourhood. 
Who were they? How were we to find them? 1 told 
off two of my men to follow a fresh trail, which led 
between the .sand-dunes and up the slopes of the moun- 
tain in the west. Ere long they returned, bringing with 
them a man from Maral-bashi, who occasionally came 
to that spot to fetch salt, of which, he said, there was a 
large deposit in the mountain. I saw some of what he 
had gathered : it appeared to be of excellent quality. He 
took it to Maral-bashi, where he .said he made a first-rate 
price of it in the bazaars. When 1 asked him, in which 
direction the town lay, he pointed towards the north-west, 
and told me it was two short day's journey to it. The 
mountain we had seen in that quarter was, as we supposed, 
the system of the Masar-alldi. About the country to the 
south-east, and the distances to the Khotan-daria, he knew 
nothing ; he was only able to add, that he had heard there 
was nothing but sand to the south, with not a single drop 
of water anywhere, and he knew that the desert was 
called Takla-makan. 
We said adieu to the lonely salt-gatherer, and continued 
south-south-east across the hard, barren, trackless plain. 
As we advanced, the mountain on our right gradually 
decreased in height, until it merged in a sand-ridge, which 
eventually became lost in the desert. This mountain 
therefore had no continuation. We could only surmise, 
that it was the eastern range which was connected with 
the Masar-tagh that Przhevalsky marked on his map as 
terminating near the Khotan-daria. 
The oTOund we were now travelling over consisted of 
