WHERE IS THE TARIM ? 839 
clear fresh water, with a temperature of 42°! Fahr. 
(5°6 C). 
On February 14th we accomplished a long march, 
although the sand was somewhat higher, and living 
tamarisks and poplars scarcer ; but there were plenty 
of dead woods all day. Sometimes the hard white 
stumps were set as close as gravestones in a cemetery, 
and we were obliged to thread our way slowly between 
them. When the camels’ loads scraped against them, 
they cracked with a noise like splintering glass. The 
steep sides of the sand-dunes faced the south-west. Our 
range of vision was curtailed on all sides by high 
menacing davans, to which we took care to give a wide 
berth. Every living poplar bore unequivocal traces of 
the visits of the wild camel. The bark and branches 
were eaten off as high up as the animal could reach. 
The reason we were still marching in the old river- 
bed was partly because of the impediments caused by 
the dead forest, and partly because certain ridges and 
ledges of clay, which at one time evidently bounded the 
river-bed, encumbered the spaces between the sand-dunes. 
The further we advanced towards the north the more the 
original irregularities of the surface were levelled down 
by the drift-sand, so that sometimes we were uncertain 
as to where the bed of the river was. A camel-track 
which we followed for a long distance led us astray, in 
that it took us too far to the west. At our next camping- 
place, the twenty-fourth since we left Tavek-kel, we found 
water at a depth of 5 ft. 5 in. ; it was quite as good as 
river water, and its temperature was 44°! Fahr. { 6 °j C.). 
By chance we also discovered, at a depth of eight and 
a half inches from the top of a sand-dune, a layer of 
snow more than three-quarters of an inch thick ; it was 
covered over with sand and lay parallel to the surface 
of the dune. This showed that it sometimes snows in 
those regions ; also that it blows in the winter, for the 
sand-dune had increased nine inches in height since 
the snow fell. This was the only time I saw snow in 
the Takla-makan Desert. 
