12 TlMEHRI. 
such difficulties as this, I having to wait behind adjust- 
ing loads, imploring people to take up extra loads, and 
then, after perhaps half an hour's delay or even three 
quarters, having to hurry forward to get to the head of 
the long procession of carriers, often forty or fifty in 
number, who, in twos and threes at a time, had been 
able to start so long before. 
The first half of our walk from Wotsa was through 
country very similar to that passed the previous day. 
So far, though we had climbed numerous steep 
hills only to descend almost immediately into 
almost correspondingly deep valleys, we had on the 
whole made a comparatively small ascent. But 
this morning, just after passing the last inhabited house 
which we were to see for three days, we climbed a tre- 
mendous hill and walked for the whole afternoon along 
a very curious, long and narrow table-land of which our 
recent ascent was one boundary. The view was bounded 
on either side and close at hand by slight swellings of 
the ground some twenty or thirty feet in height ; or if 
anywhere a more distant view could for a moment be 
obtained it was only of rolling, grass-covered, white 
hills. The soil on this table-land consisted for the most 
part of pure white sand, or rather of sandstone rock of 
so soft a nature that almost the lightest touch powdered 
it to sand ; the vegetation was chiefly a low, hoary gray 
grass ; and the general effect was of a desert white with 
hoar frost. Water was very scarce ; there was not a tree 
in sight with the exception of two small coppices seen in 
the far distance. Late in the afternoon we had still come 
to no trees to which we could hang our hammocks. Then 
we reached a tracl: where, as is not infrequent, the sand 
