I io6 
THROUGH ASIA 
far distant Tsohan-ula, away to the right. The alter- 
nations and changes and surprises which kept me busy 
amongst the mountains now of course ceased, so that I 
had next to nothing to do. The country was extremely 
uniform, the ravines and dry beds of the streams being 
the only diversities of the surface. At Bagha-namaga 
(the Little Spring) we stopped to water the horses, and 
after a march of seventeen and a half miles, halted for 
the night on the steppe of Hojegor, where there was 
an abundance of water and grass, as well as fuel. 
October 13th. A pretty brisk wind sprang up in the 
west, and loaded the air with dust, as well as hid the 
mountains. This day we advanced towards the east- 
south- east, sometimes across rough desert, the soil of 
which was heavily impregnated with salt, sometimes 
across steppes dotted with thick beds of luxuriant reeds, 
cro.ssing numerous dry ravines on our way. Our day’s 
journey of nineteen and a quarter miles ended at Tsakha, 
an encampment of ten tents, the same number as at Yikeh- 
tsohan-gol. The chief gave me a friendly welcome and 
led me into his own tent, where 1 found the members 
of his family busy making stirrups out of branches of 
tamarisk and covering them with leather. 
Next day the path inclined more towards the north, and 
led across some widely extended salt marshes, which were 
of course just then dry, but none the less tiresome for 
the horses, because every old footprint had set into a hard 
and treacherous hole. In the distance we saw every now 
and again small tent-villages, and flocks of sheep guarded 
by boys and women. It was sixteen miles to Yikeh-gol, 
the third branch of the Naijin-gol, so that our camp was 
made that night beside the same stream which we 
encountered for the first time at camp No. XXXV. 
In the evening we w’ere visited by a party of Mongols, 
bringing brandy in two or three copper vessels, and cloth 
from Lhasa, which they w'ere anxious to sell to us. Our 
visitors and Dorcheh dipped into the copper vessels so 
industriously that they grew noisy, and challenged my 
Mohammedans to a wrestling-match, in which the fuddled 
