DOWN THE KERIYA-DARIA 823 
During the thirty-five years he could look back through, 
the current of the Keriya-daria had certainly never 
diminished ; but he had remarked that the sand had 
increased, and encroached more and more upon the woods. 
Accordine to Mohammed Bai, the desert on the north 
reached to the end of the world, and it took about three 
months to get there. 
Although quite cut off from the outer world, with his 
wife, his sons, and their children, Mohammed Bai was 
a Mohammedan, and punctually said his prayers ; for, “ if 
I did not,” he explained, “the wolves and wild-boar would 
soon annihilate my flocks.” 
These forest-men pray daily to Hazrett-i-Musa (Moses), 
who is said to have been a shepherd himself, and is their 
patron saint. On the other hand, they do not know the 
names of the months or days of the week. But their 
mother-tongue they have not lost — for your native language 
follows you like the influenza to the uttermost ends of the 
earth. It sounded pretty much the same from their lips 
as it did anywhere else in the country ; slight dialectic 
variations and a greater paucity of diction being the only 
differences observable. 
When I asked these people whether they did not esteem 
themselves lucky to be left in such absolute freedom, and, 
above all, at having no dealings with the Chinese officials, 
they answered, that they thought the wolves and wild-boar 
were just as great enemies as the Chinese. 
On February 9th we pushed on northwards again. The 
river, which had been nearly 280 feet broad near Katak — 
this however at a lake-like expansion — now shrank to fifty 
feet, and wound through the impenetrable forest in a 
hesitating manner and by a series of sharp turns. That 
evening we again encamped In the wilderness, for we had 
left the last of the shepherds’ huts behind us. At that 
point the river had dwindled down to little more than a 
brook some fifteen feet across, with a volume of not more 
than thirty-five cubic feet of water In the second. 
After our last guide left us the day before to return to 
his own place, we had followed the rapidly failing stream. 
