After a morning spent in many futile attempts to attain an equilibrim of baggage on our two camels, we finally got away from Ninghsia at noon on November 24, is now.
It is, however, in proc ug plans are already under way.
118, travelling due west in the direction of the Alashan Mountains, which form a great barrier of naked rock between the fertile valley of the Yellow River and the Alashan desert. The only settlement of any importance in this wilderness to the west is the trading town variously known as Wang-yeh fu, Fumafu, Tingyuanying and Alashar, where the Alashan Mongols place is a little more tha west of and slightly north of Ninghsia. The cart road from Ninghsin runs southwest to the base of the hills, a distance of about eighty or ninety Ji, enters a deep ravine, winds through the mountains in a general northwesterly direction, and after emerging on the plain to the west, runs northwest to Wang-yeh fu. The camel road from Ninghsia to Pingfan is an obscure trail which parallels the cart road to Wangyehfu, as far as the eastern slope of the hills, and then instead of entering them, follows the line of the hills and the Great Wall considerably further south, crosses the hills by a much lower and easier pass and joins the big camel road from Wangyehfu to Pingfan, near a small Mongol monastery known to the Chinese as T'ou Tao Hou.
The only information which I was able to obtain before leaving Ninghsia, was that the camel road diverged from the cart road to Wangyehfu a short distance beyond a village near the base of the mountains, known as Pingchipu, 45 from Ninghsia. This, therefore, was our first objective.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.