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0322 The Pulse of Asia : vol.1
アジアの鼓動 : vol.1
The Pulse of Asia : vol.1 / 322 ページ(カラー画像)

New!引用情報

doi: 10.20676/00000233
引用形式選択: Chicago | APA | Harvard | IEEE

OCR読み取り結果

rial was larger, and the pentagons buckled up on the edges
and became saucer-shaped. By countless repetitions of this
process, or of something analogous to it, the entire lake-bed
became a mass of pentagons with ragged, blistered edges.

Twice we encountered faint, broad hollows, where for a
mile or two the plain was damp and comparatively smooth.
Traveling in such places was much easier than elsewhere,
but, remembering the Chinese tale of muck which swallows
horse and rider, we avoided them as far as possible. It was
well that we did so. Nothing could be more dangerous than
these smooth, soft places which felt so comfortable to our
weary feet. A few days later, beyond the main body of the
lake-bed, we came upon a small, isolated salt plain which,
as we progressed, assumed a fresher, whiter appearance and
began to look slightly damp. I was riding the biggest of the
camels, whose load of wood and ice had now been partly
used. Suddenly I found myself turning a somersault back-
ward off the animal. His hind legs had broken through the
saline crust, and had plunged a yard deep into soft, oozy
muck. As he struggled ponderously to extricate himself, his
front legs also sank in; and oily water came bubbling up in
muddy pools about the prostrate creature's belly. Two other
camels fell into the mire at the same time. In the haste with
which we began to tear off their loads I forgot to investigate
whether my neck was broken. Relieved of their burdens,
the two smaller camels extricated themselves. My big, heavy
animal, however, was so completely mired that we had to
put ropes around his legs and pull his feet out on to felts,
which we had spread on the soft mud to keep him from sink-
ing in again. It was a grim jest on the part of nature to lead