National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

come to his turn to be taken away under escort. The days passed quietly, with the jog-trot routine of regular meteorological observations.

Meantime, ZIMMERMANN found a friend in the Tibetan reincarnation, the so-called TANGUT GEGEN, who had his yurt at a distance of five kilometers from the station, and who had lived on the Edsen-gol for many years.

During the early spring, always a hard season for camels, when their pasture becomes poorer and poorer, the stock of camels at the station diminished still further, sinking to fifty-one. They wandered far afield, looking for the best possible pasture; and the camel-men often had difficulty in keeping the herd together.

The ice broke up and the whole of the left river-bank where we had had our tents was flooded. By March the days were already quite warm, but the nights were still cold.

On April ist the Mongols we had sent from Hami arrived, bringing post, 740 dollars, and the first news of the difficulties the main expedition had met with on the Sinkiang frontier. When ZIMMERMANN learned of all our setbacks and difficulties he grew reconciled to his own lot and began to think that he was comparatively well off. But when the Mongols rode off to the east solitude settled down once more on the station.

ZIMMERMANN now set about laying out a kitchen-garden, where he sowed the seeds he had been thoughtful enough to take with him from Peking: tomatoes, cucumbers, peas, beans, onions, parsley, maize, radishes, red and black, potatoes, melons and pumpkins, as well as ten different varieties of flowers.

WOLVES

One day ZIMMERMANN was visited by some Torguts who said that wolves had been preying on their herds, and asked if they might borrow some good rifles. A couple of hunters were engaged, and with ZIMMERMANN'S rifles they set off on a wolf-hunt. Four days later they returned with two dead wolves and two live wolf-cubs. The neighbouring Torguts were delighted to have been freed from a couple of these dangerous enemies of sheep. The wolf-cubs were kept in an enclosure, where they grew apace and became wilder from day to day. They found no difficulty in climbing up to the top of the enclosure, but they did not dare to jump down to the ground. A couple of puppies were let in to them, and the wolf-cubs played with their new companions in all friendliness. But after a time their wild nature began to assert itself, and the puppies had to be taken out again. Finally, the captive cubs hit upon the idea of digging tunnels under their fence to regain their liberty. It was impossible to tie up two such fierce little fellows, and at last they had to be shot.

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