IMPERA TI VE TO ABANDON JOURNEY. 323
their tent or under a tarpaulin ; for the boortza, the only fuel; was so damp that it was long till a hot meal could be provided: Several of the ponies, doubtless owing to the great height, ceased to eat even corn, and one which had-béen off his food for several days died on the second night at this camp, 17,350 feet in altitude. It was not till -near -the- :end of the second day that all the animals which had strayed in the snowstorm could be recovered.
At Camp 110, men who had been sent to Yeshil Kul for salt rejoined us, but without having found any. The supplies of that article, which had been abundant at the lake in the autumn, were now apparently nearly all submerged, but Mohammed Joo returned and succeeded in finding as much as filled one of our flour bags.
Things were not now going well with us. I was quite unable to walk all the way from Togral Monpo to Camp 110, and Rain Singh who, for thirteen days, had suffered from abnormally high temperature, with pains in his feet and shoulders, was now too ill for work, and derived no lasting benefit from any medicines that I administered. We could not prolong a journey which was serving no good purpose, and it became more and more evident that the proper course was to make for Ladak. Some miles from Camp 110 we selected a suitable place to " cache " the food and other supplies not required for our journey to Leh, dug a deep trench in the stony ground, and deposited load after load, carefully making a list of all the articles. Over the yak dans, boxes, and sacks we spread our tarpaulin, and covered the whole with a thick layer of stones and earth so that probably no one outside our own coinpany could discover this valuable depot of foodstuffs. Then disappointment and dejection overtook me, and I wearied myself thinking of the expenditure of time and means in preparation now absolutely useless. I was the only member of the caravan who was depressed ; others
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