TO PEKING AND HOME 
1251 
night in the same place, affirmed that the well was four 
thousand years old. 
The road was first-rate all the way — hard and smooth 
and straight, the surface being almost as dead level as the 
ocean. It bore every indication of being much used, 
although we met very few caravans; but then, most of 
the Chinese were at that season at their own homes for 
the New Year’s festivals. Besides, the route we had 
chosen was by no means the only road across Ordos. 
One route, somewhat longer than that by which we 
travelled, was principally used by carts ; the others chiefly 
by camel-caravans. 
The northern parts of the country were excessively 
thinly populated by Mongol nomads. We did not pass 
more than two or three encampments in districts where 
there was a little herbage. Northern Ordos is to a great 
extent desert, and a barren desolation characterizecl the 
major portion of the country we travelled through. 
It was not however the absence of inhabited and 
cultivated regions — for of such we were pretty well in- 
dependent, having brought ample supplies of rice, bread, 
and mutton with us — it was not this that made the journey 
across Ordos so extremely trying; it was the abominable 
weather we experienced. Almost every day without ex- 
ception a storm raged out of the north-west, and this, 
combined with the great cold, froze us to the marrow. 
I do not mean mere gales in the ordinary acceptation 
of the term ; I mean veritable hurricanes, which swept 
across the wide unprotected plains of Ordos with almost 
irresistible violence. I frequently felt as though every 
moment I should be lifted clean out of my saddle, or 
as though the camel would be blown bodily over. Furs 
and wrappings afforded very little protection ; the wind 
pierced through everything. Many a time when we came 
across a few dry steppe plants, we stopped for a few 
minutes to set a light to them, and in that way thawed 
our numbed and frozen limbs. 
On January 31st it blew the hardest from the west of 
any hurricane we had yet experienced. Travelling was 
