LARSON informed us that there were some ancient graves at the foot of the nearest mountain. HUANG and Professor Sm became so interested that they set off, accompanied by some of the European members, to see the spot for themselves. HUANG afterwards began to dig on the site, but the Mongols of the tract complained that Chinese were digging in their soil and disturbing the earth spirits.
The graves consisted of squares of stones, within which had been placed smaller stones. There were about a dozen of them. The largest was 8 x 5 meters, and another 6 x 4 meters. In the former one saw that the outer border of stones, some of them as much as one meter in cross-section, were vertically placed flags forming a sort of fence around the interior of the grave, where other stones were roughly strewn. In one place there was a row of vertically placed stone-flags, twenty-two in number and with intervals of several meters between the stones.
On the Ist August we put our clocks back one hour.
We followed the great caravan route, and soon came in among small hills. By eight o'clock it was already so warm that I had to take off my thick leather waistcoat. At half-past eight we were approaching the last file of LARSON'S caravan. When we were barely a hundred meters distant we heard wild shouts and saw the file spreading out and scattering, the camels rushing right and left. The loads
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