it prudent to proceed amid such severe cold, and to
leave an encampment, where at least our animals got sufficient herbage to
browse upon, and where fuel was abundant. Towards noon, the weather
having grown milder, we went out to cut wood on the hills. On our way we
observed that our animals had left the pasturage, and collected on the
banks of the rivulet. We at once conceived that they were tormented by
thirst, and that the stream being frozen, they could not quench it. We
bent our steps to them, and found, in fact, the camels eagerly licking
the surface of the ice, while the horse and the mule were kicking upon it
with their hard hoofs. The hatchet we had brought with us to cut wood,
served to break the ice, and to dig a small pond, where our animals could
quench their thirst.

Towards evening, the cold having resumed its intensity, we adopted a plan
for enabling us to obtain a better sleep than we had in the preceding
night. Until morning, the time was divided into three watches, and each
of us was charged, in turns, with keeping up a large fire in the tent,
while the others slept. Thus we did not feel much of the cold, and slept
in peace, without fear of setting our linen house on fire.

After two days of horrible cold the wind abated, and we resolved to
proceed on our way. It was only with great difficulty that we got down
our tent. The first nail that we tried to draw out, broke like glass
under the hammer. The sandy, humid soil on which we had made our
encampment, was so frozen that the nails stuck in it as if they had been
incrusted in stone. To uproot them, we were obliged to wet them several
times with boiling water.

At the time of our departure, the temperature was so mild that we were
fain to take off out skin coats, and to pack them up until further
occasion. Nothing is more frequent in Tartary than these sudden changes
of temperature. Sometimes the mildest weather is abruptly followed by
the most horrible frost. All that is needed for this is the falling of
snow, and the subsequent rise of the north wind. Any one not inured to
these sudden changes of the atmosphere, and not provided, in travelling,
with well-furred robes, is often exposed to dreadful accidents. In the
north of Mongolia especially, it is not unusual to find travellers frozen
to death amidst the desert.

On the fifteenth day of the new moon, we came upon numerous caravans,
following, like ourselves, the direction from e