National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

> > > >
Color New!IIIF Color HighRes Gray HighRes PDF   Japanese English
0137 Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.2
Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.2 / Page 137 (Color Image)

New!Citation Information

doi: 10.20676/00000213
Citation Format: Chicago | APA | Harvard | IEEE

OCR Text

spent in picking our way through the maze of tamarisk
cones, darkness forced us to halt in the first thicket of
Toghraks.
Small channels, which looked as if cut by running
water at no very distant period, here traversed the jungle
in plenty. But of water, or of those reed patches which
usually denote its presence not deep below the ground,
there was none. For the men this mattered little; for in
our 'Mussucks' we had brought a plentiful supply; but I
was sorry for our ponies, which could not quench their
thirst after a long and warm march. By 9 P.M. the Naik
arrived and reported that he had brought in the last
straggler, the man who had driven or rather dragged along
our three refractory sheep. In the light of big bonfires
which the men lit, I discovered that close to my tent were
decayed huts dug out from the ground and covered with
rough tree-trunks. No doubt herdsmen had once camped
here, and water could not then have been far off. But
how long ago was it? Here was an illustration of the
doubts ever besetting the student of things primitive and
devoid of chronology.
Rest came only after midnight, and before daybreak I
was aroused by the news that two labourers were missing.
My honest secretary was greatly excited about it. He
knew that the two men were confirmed opium-smokers,
and feared that, having strayed from our track in the dark-
ness or lagged behind surreptitiously to indulge in a
smoke, they would get hopelessly confused, and wander
about without aim, to succumb at last to thirst. Vainly I
represented how difficult it would be for men possessed of
their senses not to see the light of our camp fires or to
trace our track in daylight. While I resigned myself to
the belief that the men had taken the first chance to
decamp and were now moving back to Nan-hu, com-
pensated by an unearned advance of money for whatever
trouble they might have in their wandering, Chiang's
imagination saw the hapless men already lying dead in
the jungle.
In any case we had to clear up the matter of their dis-
appearance, and if they were really lost to bring them