carried across the elevated spurs which descend from this range, he had succeeded in connecting our surveys eastwards with the work done by Captain Deasy around Polu. In accordance with my instructions he then proceeded to Keriya, and thence a fresh ` Darogha .' supplied as a guide and egcort by the local Amban had taken him through the jungle belt flanking the Keriya River down to the point where he fell in with the party I had sent ahead under Kasim, the hunter.
Ram Singh, reticent at all times, had little to relate either that day or thereafter of the mountain tracts be had passed through, apart from topographical details which appealed to his professional training, and which had already been duly recorded in his plane-table " sections." That his little party had undergone considerable hardships both on account of the cold and the want of all local supplies, I could readily believe from my own experience. But what had evidently impressed him more than anything else, and what prompted him to a short outburst of quite unusual communicativeness, was the weird desolation of the desert, the total absence of life of any kind among the high waves of sand he had crossed since leaving the banks of the frozen river. I could see that the curiosity excited by the manifestly Indian character of the sculptures and paintings I had unearthed was by no means sufficient to counter-balance the uncanny feelings which these strange surroundings, pregnant with death and solitude, had roused in my otherwise hardy Hindu followers. I did my best to cheer them by sending as a welcome gift when their camp was pitched such little luxuries as I had—packets of my own compressed tea, some frozen eggs, raisins and almonds, &c.
In the evening when the dusk had put a stop to excavation and I could tramp back through the sand to the shelter of my little tent, I lost no time in sending for Ram Singh to examine his plane-table work. A comparison of the position indicated in it for DandanUiliq with my own fixing of the site would be a decisive test for the accuracy of our respective surveys. Considering the very deceptive nature of the desert ground over which we had carried so
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