THE DESERT OF TSAIDAM 
1 109 
Mongols were a good deal sobered. After that they fell 
asleep, and slept hard and heavy. Next morning their 
heads ached, and they begged me to stay the day there ; 
but I refused to accede to their request. 
First thing after starting we crossed the broad bed 
of the Yikeh-gol. It was a good quarter of a mile wide, 
but contained next to no water. The terraces on each 
side of it rose however sixteen feet high, indicating that it 
swells to a very considerable river in the summer. The 
bed was littered with gravel, and by a multitude of curves 
wound northwards towards the great central basin of 
Tsaidam. The country on the other side of the .stream 
presented the same monotonous uniformity as heretofore. 
Level as the evening sea, silent and desolate, the steppe 
stretched in every direction ; not a creature, tame or wild, 
to be seen anywhere, not an object to rest the eye upon. 
Our camping-place (sixteen and three-quarter miles) was 
called Urdu-toleh, and offered plenty of both water and 
grass. Contrary to the practice of the Mohammedans, the 
Mongols turned their horses loose to graze immediately 
after halting. 
On October i6th, we did not cover more than twelve 
and a half miles, namely to Togdeh-gol {9140 feet). As 
a general rule, the Mongols of Tsaidam make very short 
marches, so that it is not difficult to understand how they 
take two months to travel to Lhasa, and forty-three days 
to Si-ning-fti. 
The night was cold, the minimum registered being 
3°2 Fahr. (— 16° C.). The thermometer dropped much 
lower than in Northern Tibet ; still the continental winter, 
with its excessive extremes of cold, was close at hand. 
The day was bright and fine, and in the south we could 
plainly see the mountain-range called Kharanguin-ula, 
(the Dark Mountains). The Togdeh-gol flowed at the 
bottom of a deep narrow gorge, which it occasioned us 
very great difficulty to get across without a wetting. On 
the opposite bank we halted among a clump of tamarisks, 
and made ourselves as comfortable as the circumstances 
permitted, for I had decided to give the horses a day’s rest. 
