The following morning the innkeeper walked a few hundred yards with us and pointed out in the remote distance to the southwest a black peak jutting above the grassland, which he said was on our trail. He advised that we keep this in sight, ignore the ram tions of the road, since our camels were lightly loaded, and' directly for it. This we did- with complete success, travelling all day up and down little—grass-grown hillocks past settlements of -Mon-gul tents until just at dark, and a li from Loutseshan, the' mountain which had been our landmark, we came on to a very clearly define ed camel road. I hurried ahead to find a well and came very shotty to a big bare area much trampled by cattle which, in the grassland, is a sure indication of the pri water. A little search discovered the well and I sat down beside it to smoke a cigarette and wait for the Aiter what seemed an interminable period, I began to be alarmed and feared that Dusty had met with some accident. I shouted with all the power of my lungs and after a time got a reply, not from the direction in which we had come, but from some point further south along the tr: He had passed mz in the dark and not being accustomed to grass land topography, had circled the trampled ground around the well. thinking it a bog.
returned in due course and wanted to know where the hous and inns were, and when I said that there weren't any, he suggested going on until we came to them. I had to explain that he had seen his last inn that morning and probably his last house for a great many days to come, and that tr: vellers in the desert were usual grateful enough to find water, and did not expect the good-natured Mongols who dug the wells and kept them' up to provide hot k'angs and prepared food in addition.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.