great pieces of
carpet, carefully fastened round the body, the head being enveloped in
rolls of camel's hair. Under any other circumstances this singular
costume would have excited our hilarity, but just then, we were in no
laughing mood. Despite all these precautions, the animals of the caravan
were decimated by death.

The numerous rivers that we had to pass upon the ice were another source
of inconceivable misery and fatigue. Camels are so awkward and their
walk is so uncouth and heavy, that in order to facilitate their passage,
we were compelled to make a path for them across each river, either by
strewing sand and dust, or by breaking the first coat of ice with our
hatchets. After this, we had to take the brutes, one by one, and guide
them carefully over the path thus traced out; if they had the ill-luck to
stumble or slip, it was all over with them; down they threw themselves on
the ice, and it was only with the utmost labour they could be got up
again. We had first to take off their baggage, then to drag them with
ropes to the bank, and then to stretch a carpet on which they might be
induced to rise; sometimes all this labour was lost: you might beat the
obstinate animals, pull them, kick them; not an effort would they make to
get on their legs; in such cases, the only course was to leave them where
they lay, for it was clearly impossible to wait, in those hideous
localities, until the pig-headed brute chose to rise.

All these combined miseries ended in casting the poor travellers into a
depression bordering on despair. To the mortality of the animals, was
now added that of the men, who, hopelessly seized upon by the cold, were
abandoned, yet living, on the road. One day, when the exhaustion of our
animals had compelled us to relax our march, so that we were somewhat
behind the main body, we perceived a traveller sitting on a great stone,
his head bent forward on his chest, his arms pressed against his sides,
and his whole frame motionless as a statue. We called to him several
times, but he made no reply, and did not even indicate, by the slightest
movement, that he heard us. "How absurd," said we to each other, "for a
man to loiter in this way in such dreadful weather. The wretched fellow
will assuredly die of cold." We called to him once more, but he remained
silent and motionless as before. We dismounted, went up to him, and
recognised in him a young Mongol Lama, who had often paid us a visit in