6o8 
THROUGH ASIA 
with me. He reeled about like a drunken man, and kept 
constantly sitting- down. Seeing that he was on the right 
track for the pool, and that I could not do more for him 
than I had done already, I hurried on ahead. When 
I came to the pool, I drank and bathed ; and then waited 
fully an hour. But Kasim did not come. 
Hunger began to be importunate. It was of the first 
importance that I should find human beings as soon as 
I possibly could, both for the sake of food, and also to 
enlist their help to return into the desert to the assistance 
of Islam, and to fetch such of our goods as might be 
saved. In the meantime therefore I left Kasim to his 
fate, and hastened on at a rapid pace up the right bank, 
that is due south. My boots were still so wet that I was 
unable to get them on, and so went barefoot. 
At nine o’clock there sprang up an extremely violent 
storm from the west, which drove clouds of sand and dust 
before it across the bed of the river, and darkened the sun, 
so that I had not the smallest occasion to complain of 
excessive heat. But the thick haze completely shut out 
every view of the surroundings, so that I could see neither 
the forest on my right nor that on my left. After going 
a stretch of about three hours, I was again tormented by 
thirst, for my mouth and throat were parched by the hot 
drift-sand and the buran (storm), and between them they 
nearly choked me. I turned aside into the forest and 
sought shelter in the undergrowth. I sat there a while, 
full of anxious thought. All at once it flashed across 
my mind, that it might be days to the next -vvater-pool, 
and that it would be unwise to leave the one which I 
had in such a wonderful manner discovered. Moreover, 
I thought it would be an excellent thing to see Kasim 
again. I therefore turned back towards the north. But 
I had barely gone half-an-hour when I stumbled by chance 
upon a tiny pool, scarcely a yard across, and containing' 
a little muddy water with a faintly saltish taste. I drank 
an enormous quantity of it. I was overcome with 
weariness ; but did not know what was the wisest thing' 
to do. There was water here, and I had no immediate 
