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Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books
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The heart of a continent : vol.1 |
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When it was lighted, the position did not look cheerful.
The camels were each perched up on a little hillock, sepa-
rated from each other by pools of water and slimy clay.
The guide, the two Mongols, and my boy were pulling away
at their nose-strings, till I thought their whole noses would be
pulled off, but they would not budge. Beating them behind
was next tried, but that also failed. At last they tried pulling
them backwards, and this had the desired effect—they were
started, and once they were in motion they were kept going,
although they nearly fell or split themselves up at every
step. But now the path had disappeared, it began to rain,
and I thought we were in for a night on the swamp, which
would probably have been our fate had not my compass
shown that we were going off in the wrong direction, there
being no signs of a star for the guide to follow. At last we
came upon sand, found a path, and very soon after a patch
of gravel, on which we pitched camp.
We had to halt the next day, because the camels would
not be able to get through the wet clay soil which surrounded
us, in spite of what the guide had said about their getting
stiff if they halted a day. We started the next morning, and
for a few days continued along the plain between the two
parallel ranges, that to the north rising some one thousand
five hundred feet, and the one to the south about eight hundred
feet above the plain. Both ranges, like all the other hills
which I saw in crossing the Gobi, were absolutely bare.
One evening Ma-te-la, the Mongol assistant, was suddenly
seen to shoot ahead at a great pace, and, on asking, I found
he was going home. On he went, far away over the plain,
till he became a mere dot in the distance, and I could not
help envying him. In the same direction, and with nothing
apparently between me and it but distance, was my home,
and I felt myself struggling to pierce through space, and see
myself returning, like Ma-te-la, home. But the dull reality
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