314 DISCOVERY OF DATED DOCUMENTS [CHAP. XX.
just about to retrace my footprints while I could still distinguish them, when I suddenly recognised sticking out from the sand some remains of walls which days before I had noticed at a considerable distance to the south-east of my camping-ground.
Trusting to my recollection of their relative position, I turned off to my right and, keeping along the crest-line of the dunes which I knew to be running mainly from north-west to south-east, made my way slowly onwards until I heard my shouts answered by some of my men. Old Turdi and Islam Beg, my faithful Darogha, had grown uneasy at my absence, and had sent the men out in couples to search for me. The shelter of my tent and the hot tea that awaited me was doubly welcome after this little incident. There was nobody to share my Christmas dinner but ` Yolchi Beg,' my sociable little terrier, who was ever ready to let his own dinner outside the tent get frozen hard while sitting up amidst the rugs of the bed for choice bits from my table. I sometimes doubt whether even the friends whose kind thoughts turned towards me that evening from the distant South and West, could realise how cheerful is the recollection of the Christmas spent in the solitude and cold of the desert.
The ruined structures which had helped to direct me that evening were the next to be excavated. Curiously enough, the finds made in them formed the best complement of the results of the previous day's work. A small Buddhist temple, constructed in the usual style of these ruins, with square cella and enclosing passage, was first brought to light, and furnished a number of interesting frescoes, as well as some painted panels and manuscript fragments in cursive Brahmi characters. When subsequently the ground floor rooms of a small dwelling-house (D. VII.) close to the north of the shrine were cleared from the deep sand that filled them, we came, on the floor of the central room, measuring about 18 by 13 feet, upon quite a small collection of Chinese documents on paper. They were all folded into narrow rolls, just as the one found in the ruin D.V., and lay scattered about on the ground near the well-preserved fireplace, either separate or sticking together in
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