628 
THROUGH ASIA 
and plotted some of my maps of the dunes. Between- 
whiles I lay down on my “bed” and read the Bible and 
the Swedish Psalm-book, in which I discovered many a 
masterpiece of Swedish poetry. 
A big yellow scorpion came walking over my sleeping- 
carpet, and when I molested him to kill him, fought like 
a mad thing. It now struck me as little short of wonderful 
that, whilst wandering about the forest by myself, and 
sleeping and resting as I did at all hours amongst the 
undergrowth, I had never disturbed any of these venomous 
animals. Considering the feeble state I was in, a sting 
might have proved serious, for the scorpion’s sting is not 
to be despised. 
Half a score of merchants, with a caravan of forty 
donkeys, carrying raisins and kishmish (currants) to Ak-su, 
passed my hut, and stopped a moment to greet me. I 
bought a bag of raisins from them, and the shepherds 
got a treat. 
These merchants told me that Masar-tagh consisted of 
two parallel ridges running towards the north-west, but 
that neither extended very far into the desert. The desert 
in the vicinity of the ridges was said to be extremely 
desolate and barren ; high sand-dunes preponderated, and 
there were but few patches of bare, hard ground. The 
name was derived from a masar or saint’s tomb, the 
position of which was Indicated by tughs, or sticks with 
pieces of rag attached to them, stuck in the ground on 
a conspicuous spur of the dunes. The custodian of the 
shrine was a sheikh, who generally lived in Khotan, but 
spent a small part of the winter in the desert. He was 
rewarded for his services by the contributions, amounting 
to 200 tengeh (about i 05 .) a year, of the owners of the 
sheep which grazed in that region. 
The following days slipped past peacefully and quietly, 
and I gradually recovered from the almost superhuman 
exertions I had undergone in the desert. All the same, 
I had to summon up my patience ; for it did get monoto- 
nous, sitting there alone day after day and night after 
night in my lonely hut in the midst of the forest. Yet 
