nt, and menaced to assail also our linen
tents, was spreading about, in all directions, with fearful rapidity.
All the travellers, armed with their felt carpets, were endeavouring to
stifle the flame, or at all events to keep it from reaching the tents,
and in this latter effort they were quite successful. The fire, repulsed
on all sides, forced an issue from the encampment, and rushed out into
the desert, where, driven by the wind, it spread over the pasturages,
which it devoured as it went. We thought, however, that we had nothing
further to fear; but the cry, "Save the camels! save the [Picture: Fire
in the camp] camels!" at once reminded us how little we knew of a
conflagration in the desert.

We soon perceived that the camels stolidly awaited the flame, instead of
fleeing from it, as the horses and oxen did. We hereupon hastened to the
succour of our beasts, which, at the moment, seemed tolerably remote from
the flame. The flame, however, reached them as soon as we did, and at
once surrounded us and them. It was to no purpose we pushed and beat the
stupid brutes; not an inch would they stir; but there they stood
phlegmatically gaping at us with an air that seemed to ask us, what right
we had to come and interrupt them at their meals. We really felt as if
we could have killed the impracticable beasts. The fire consumed so
rapidly the grass it encountered, that it soon assailed the camels, and
caught their long, thick hair; and it was with the utmost exertion that,
by the aid of the felt carpets we had brought with us, we extinguished
the flame upon their bodies. We got three of them out of the fire, with
only the end of their hair singed, but the fourth was reduced to a
deplorable condition; not a bristle remained on its entire body; the
whole system of hair was burned down to the skim, and the skin itself was
terribly charred.

The extent of pasturage consumed by the flame might be about a mile and a
quarter long by three quarters of a mile broad. The Thibetians were in
ecstasies at their good fortune in having the progress of conflagration
so soon stayed, and we fully participated in their joy, when we learned
the full extent of the evil with which we had been menaced. We were
informed that if the fire had continued much longer it would have reached
the black tents, in which case the shepherds would have pursued and
infallibly massacred us. Nothing can equal the fury of these poor
children of the deser