CHAPTER LXV. 
DOWN THE KERIYA-DARIA 
AFTER a day’s rest we pushed on again, still in a 
x\. northerly direction. We now always took a man 
with us, to guide us through the w'oods. We often rode 
through primeval forest, in which the trees were large and 
stood close together, and where the camels had great 
difficulty in making their way through the underwood ; 
whilst I had to keep a sharp look-out to avoid being swept 
off my camel by the hanging branches. On January 30th 
we passed the point where the new river-bed again re-united 
with the old. There the river reached the noble breadth 
of a hundred and ten yards. The ice was fourteen inches 
thick ; in some places as bright as a looking-glass, in others 
thinly sprinkled with dust. 
For the space of ten days the atmosphere remained 
charged with fine dust, which, lifted by the wind in the 
early part of the year, floats about in the air a long time 
before settling back to the earth again. Every year at this 
season the atmosjjhere becomes dust-clouded in this way 
a very unwelcome visitation to the shepherds ; for it is sO' 
fine that it feathers every blade of grass as with a light 
down, causing the sheep to have strangles. It settles on 
everything, colouring the yellow sand-dunes white, so that 
tracks made across them appear as dark lines, even at 
a great distance. 
On February ist the river began to show a more marked 
tendency to trend to the north-east. I had already con- 
ceived the idea of crossing the whole of that part of the 
Desert of Gobi from south to north, and trying to reach 
the d arim river. It was therefore rather disturbing to 
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