ter is for the most part excessively salt.
Here and there, however, by the very side of a brackish pool, there is a
spring of soft, sweet, delicious water; all such are indicated to
travellers by a small flag, fluttering from the end of a long pole.

Dabsoun-Noor is not so much a lake as a reservoir of mineral salt, mixed
with nitrous effloresence. The latter, in colour pale white, and
crumbling between the fingers, is easily distinguishable from the salt,
which is of a grey tint, and glitters like crystal when broken.
Dabsoun-Noor is about twenty lis in circumference. Around it, at
intervals, are the tents occupied by the Mongols who work it, and the
Chinese who have thrust themselves in as partners. It were difficult
indeed to find any description of industry or commerce within a certain
range of their own country in which the Chinese do not contrive to have a
hand. The manipulation to which the salt is subjected requires neither
great labour nor great science. All the workers do is to pick it up as
it comes in the reservoir, to pile it, and, when the heap is of a certain
size, to cover it with a thin coating of potter's earth. When the salt
has sufficiently purified itself, the Tartars convey it to the nearest
Chinese mart and exchange it for tea, tobacco, brandy, and other
commodities. In the locality itself salt is of no value: at every step
you see lumps of it, sometimes of remarkable purity. We filled a bag
with these for our own use and for that of the camels, which are all very
fond of salt. We traversed Dabsoun-Noor throughout its breadth from east
to west, and we had to take the utmost precaution as we proceeded over
its loose, and at times almost moving, soil. The Tartars recommended us
not to deviate in the least from the path we should find marked out, and
by all means to avoid any places where we should see the water bubbling
up, for there they informed us, were gulfs which they had frequently
endeavoured to sound, but without result. This statement induced us to
believe that there is a noor, or lake, here, but that it is underground,
the place called Dabsoun-Noor being merely the covering or roof of the
lake, composed of the saline and saltpetrous matter produced by the
constant evaporation of the subterranean waters. Foreign matter, brought
by the wind, and consolidated by the rain, would in the lapse of time
form a crust upon such a roof strong enough to bear the caravans that
incessantly tr