descending to a very low level, the sun was getting higher and higher, and the wind hotter and hotter, until I shrank from it as from the blast of a furnace. Only the hot winds of the Punjab can be likened to it. Fortunately we still had some water in the casks, brought from our last camping-ground, and we had some bread, so we were not on our last legs ; but it was a trying enough march for the men, and much more so for the camels, for they had nothing to eat or drink, and the heat both days was extreme. We at last reached a well among some trees. The guide called the distance two hundred and thirty li, and I reckon it at about seventy miles. We were twenty-seven hours and three-quarters from camp, including the halt of four and a half hours. We had descended nearly four thousand feet, and the heat down here was very much greater than we had yet experienced. We were encamped on the dry bed of a river, on the skirts of what looked like a regular park—the country being covered with trees, and the ground with long coarse grass. It was most striking, as on the other bank of the river there was not a vestige of vegetation.
We had taken on a Mongol guide, and I had told him to keep a look-out for Ovis poli. Shortly after we left our last camp among the low hills, he gave a shout, and darted off at a heap of sticks, and extricated two pairs of Ovis poli horns. One a magnificent pair, which measured fifty-two and fifty-four inches respectively. These I took on, and left the other pair, which measured only forty-three inches. The large pair measured nineteen inches round the base—as thick as my thigh. The Mongol guide said this was a hiding-place for the hunters. It was placed fifty yards from some water, where the animals came to drink. I asked the guide if he had seen wild camels about here ; he said, " Any amount," and that he had some young ones at his yurt, and also some skins. What a chance I had missed ! for his tent was only ten miles off our camp at Ula-khutun. Further on in the desert of
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