546 
THROUGH ASIA 
presence of “land.” My senses reeled as I gazed across 
that desolate ocean of sand, in the depths of which we 
had hopelessly lost ourselves. Again and again, from 
the top of every sand-ridge I came to, I swept the 
horizon with my field-glass, hoping to discern in the 
east the dim dark line of the woods of the Khotan- 
daria. But all in vain. 
Going down the side of one of the dunes, my eye 
fell upon a small object resembling a root. I stooped 
down to pick it up, when suddenly it darted away and 
disappeared in a little hole on the edge of the dune. 
It was a lizard, of the same yellow colour as the .sand. 
How did the creature live.^ Did it eat nothingf ? Did 
it never want a drop of water to drink ? 
It turned out a splendid day. The sky was flecked 
with light feathery clouds ; the heat was not at all 
oppressive ; radiation was less active than usual. At 
the end of three and a half hours I was overtaken by 
the caravan ; which continued to go well all day long. 
But when they came up, Mohammed Shah and the two 
sick camels were already mi.ssing. “ They were coming 
on slowly after them,” said the other men. High up 
in the sky we perceived two wild-geese, scudding away 
to the north-west. This again revived our hopes ; for 
we conjectured that they came from the Khotan-daria, 
and were making for the little desert lake that lay at 
the foot of the mountains we had passed. And yet, 
after all, we were only trying to deceive ourselves ; for 
wild-geese only fly at such a great height w'hen they 
are migrating from place to place ; and when they are 
doing that, what signifies to them the crossing of a desert 
some 200 miles broad ? 
I got up on Boghra’s back for a while, and he received 
the accession to his burden without murmuring. As soon 
as 1 was mounted, I felt myself terribly tired ; yet wdien I 
noticed how the animal’s knees tottered at every step he 
took, I got down again and walked. 
That day the sand-hills were the highest of any we 
had yet crossed — fully 200 feet high. The way I 
