The occasional glimpse ofthe farm~ fringed river winding like a tangled ribbon is the only relief, and the only ign of life from such a height is an oouasional raft of inflated bullock or atheep akins rushing down the stream Inden with wool or hides, the six great yuloh, three each fore and aft, lash ing in the sunlight as those operating them wrestle with the swirling waters to keep the buoyant and fragile floats from foundering on a mud bank.
Fair sized out the length of six These something to see. to eight inflated bullock skins placed head. to tail in width, and 90 side by side in length, The fatter took Li tailless, hairless oxen standing in alalls and the wonder, is who blows them all up? These tightly inflated skins are packed closely together. top of them are frames of bamboo of light wood, on which the cargo {s piled high, and whereon the rafts-men live and have their being during the voyage. These rafts come from far above Lanchow, sweep swiftly past that city if they have no business there, and swirl and eddy and swing for hundreds of miles mostly down to Paotow, where the cargos are unloaded, the framework sold, and the skins deflated, packed up, and car led back to the' places whence they came.
For ferry service on the river the rafts are made from inflated sheep skins, far fatter full of air than they fever could have been when full of food, with a bamboo frame atop of them, and are one man affairs which will carry a few passengers or a light Toad of freight. They consist, mostly, of a dozen inflated skins, and when not in use are carried about by the owner, who seeks his customers along the river bank with his tax! on his Dback—a taxi of skins, golden in colour, and a strange looking argosy. In this sparsely Inhabited and eroded land the river is the outward road. At night time the rafts tle up at some convenient spot and the raflsmen exchange the gossip from up-river for lat where they may happen to be and later on carry that further down. So the river bank communities learn something, while the villagers imprisoned in the interior learn nothing More Open Landscape Avent 100 miles out from Lanchow the snarled loess gives way a more open landscape but none the less wilderness—barren and dry and uninhabited. Now and again what Took ike frozen waves of wind. blown earth stretch in long ridges, and then in the purplirg distance Toms tae rasuntain rarspert of the Ala Shan. We se2 our first anc only: camel caravan, camped for the day In the low hills, having just emerged from the sands of the Little Gobi which now blaze into view, a creep-Ing stream of rusty red sand waves, trying to elude the confining restraint of the mountains in an effort to penetrate Kansu. "What a sand trap, says the Young Marshal, as we see the red desert stretching into an ever widening horizon in the distance. The Changing hues of the mountains, as sweep on towards them, develop 'a magnificent and vivid colour scheme. Now the Ala Shan, like a cut cameo, shuts off the red of the desert, becomes a pastel and then a deep blue, lashed with oxidized strata that make voluptuous riot for the eyes, and causes one to long for the virile and bold brush of an artist.
The Great Wall The Great Wall, which we have had in view many times since leaving Lanchow, mostly as a brave streak of loess ridge, acting as a break for drifting sand, with what were once bastions and towers abrased into round humpe, now assumes an air of solidity and importance and respectft sinuously skirts the ing mountains and eventually disappears up a ravine as if scared of Its presumption, to emerge once again at Ninghsia. It so far has resisted the vicious efforts of time and aments to obliterate it, and struggles against mighty odds to hold fig line against the onslaughts of invading sands and the torment of the winds.
Under the protection of the Als Shan the earth begins to take on 0 more friendly and more natural appearance, habitations become more pronounced, farms appear, and in the @istance tombs show up and we know that Ninghsia is somewhere near. We could see water holes splashed about the plain, an unusual but a refreshing sight in this region of waste and arid land. Then came the gaunt and crumbling walls of the old-time Ching garrison, with its lone mud-coloured ind nearby was the airfield, of soldiers drawn up, and swung round in an imposing.
But we could not see the city of Ninghsia. "As we banked down ani roared lower towards the landing field we expected to see the line of cavalry jump out of iis skin and Jumble itself on the plain, but to our Surprise those ponies stood stock still ifa monster plane was but a droning beetle swooping out of the sky.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.