f sleeping upon the beds or
upon the kang they find in the room ready for their use. The Tartars of
the caravan we found in the inn at San-Yen-Tsin were allowed to carry on
their domestic matters in the open air. The simplicity of these poor
children of the desert was so great that they seriously asked us whether
the innkeeper would make them pay anything for the accommodation he
afforded them.

We continued on our way through the province of Kan-Sou, proceeding to
the south-west. The country, intersected with streams and hills, is
generally fine, and the people apparently well off. The great variety of
its productions is owing partly to a temperate climate and a soil
naturally fertile, but, above all, to the activity and skill of the
agriculturists. The chief product of the district is wheat, of which the
people make excellent loaves, like those of Europe. They sow scarcely
any rice, procuring almost all the little they consume from the adjacent
provinces. Their goats and sheep are of fine breed, and constitute, with
bread, the principal food of the population. Numerous and inexhaustible
mines of coal place fuel within everyone's reach. It appeared to us that
in Kan-Sou anyone might live very comfortably at extremely small cost.

At two days distance from the barrier of San-Yen-Tsin we were assailed by
a hurricane which exposed us to very serious danger. It was about ten
o'clock in the morning. We had just crossed a hill, and were entering
upon a plain of vast extent, when, all of a sudden, a profound calm
pervaded the atmosphere. There was not the slightest motion in the air,
and yet the cold was intense. Insensibly, the sky assumed a dead-white
colour; but there was not a cloud to be seen. Soon, the wind began to
blow from the west; in a very short time it became so violent that our
animals could scarcely proceed. All nature seemed to be in a state of
dissolution. The sky, still cloudless, was covered with a red tint. The
fury of the wind increased; it raised in the air enormous columns of
dust, sand, and decayed vegetable matter, which it then dashed right and
left, here, there, and everywhere. At length the wind blew so
tremendously, and the atmosphere became so utterly disorganised, that, at
midday, we could not distinguish the very animals upon which we were
riding. We dismounted, for it was impossible to advance a single step,
and after enveloping our faces in handkerchiefs in order that we mi