824 
THROUGH ASIA 
sometimes throug'h tamarisk thickets so dense that we were 
forced to cut our way through them with our hatchets, 
sometimes through small kamish-beds or across sand-dunes 
sparsely overgrown with vegetation. 
It saddened me when we at length reached the point 
where the stream died away in the sand, under a sheet of 
soft ice ; the river finally giving up its desperate struggle 
against the desert. All the same, the dry bed served us 
yet one day longer. It was narrow and deep, being gener- 
ally reached by the summer floods, and its banks were 
occupied by primeval forest, so thick that nothing short of 
fire could effectually clear it. At intervals there were 
tunnels through the thickets, along which the wild-boar 
penetrate to the river for the purpose of uprooting the 
reeds that grow in its bed. The landscape reminded me 
in some respects of the creeks winding among the dark 
date-palms at Basra (Bussorah) on the Shatt-el-Arab. 
On the evening of February lOth we encamped in the 
river-bed, and digging for water, found it at a depth of six 
feet. There for the last time we heard the wind rustling 
in the leaves of the poplars which were still left hanging 
sere and yellow from the previous autumn. On every side 
the eternal sand loured upon us. Once more we were 
about to confront its awful powers of destruction. 
