THROUGH ASIA 
894 
quickly dressed out of him, and he is now waiting with 
impatience to start on a fresh journey to the great deserts 
of Central Asia. 
All being in readiness, the oars dipped in the water, and 
the canoe glided with the supple ease of an eel over the 
dark blue meandering river. 
But by this the atmosphere had lost its stillness and 
calm. During the previous night a hard “black buran had 
sprung up from the east, and the sky was now black with 
it. The majestic old poplars humbly bent before the fury 
of its wrath. So long as we were on the river, there was 
no danger, for it flowed at the bottom of a deep narrow 
channel, protected by belts of reeds ; and then again, the 
teeth of the stornr were broken by the forest which grew 
along the river-bank. But this only lasted for a couple 
of hours or so. After that we were on the open lake the 
whole way. The two oarsmen were afraid of this part 
of the journey, and it required all my powers of persuasion 
to induce them to believe there was no danger ; for we 
could all three of us swim, and Yolldash as well. To 
me the buran was rather welcome than otherwise ; for 
that day at one p.m. the thermometer only registered 69^2 
Fahr. (20°7 C.). 'I'he storm sang its shrill monotonous 
song in the leafy crowns of the poplars, a song that never 
weai-ied, a song that continually gave the key to new 
fantasies of day-dreaming. 
And so we hastened along the dark pathway of the 
water, I idly watching the capricious play and interplay 
of the dimpling eddies as the swift canoe glided on past 
them. The narrow belts of reeds hedged in the river 
on either hand, and made me imagine we were gliding 
down a deserted Venetian canal. 
Kvery now and again we stopped, that I might measure 
the depth of the river. Once the oarsmen stopped of 
their own accord, and said, that “just there there used 
to be a permanent salt pool in the river-bed at the time 
both river and lakes were dry. 1 sounded, and found the 
depth was thirty-one feet, truly an extraordinary depth foi 
a river with a volume of only 810 cubic feet in the 
