e salt deposit--No water and no fuel--A device to protect
oneself against great heat--Amazing intelligence of
cats--Nature's ways and men's ways--A hot climb--A brilliantly
coloured range--Sea shells and huge fossils.

On November 11th at ten o'clock p.m. we gladly left poisonous Lawah and
spent the night (November 12th) traversing a mountain region by a
flattish and low pass, and then travelling due north entered the actual
_Dasht-i-lut_--the sandy Salt Desert, the sediment of surface salt being
in some places so thick and white as to resemble snow. Here and there
some hillocks of sand relieved the monotony of the dreary journey,
otherwise flat sand and surface salt extended as far as the eye could
see.

The nights, even when there was no moonlight, were so clear, and the
stars and planets so brilliant, that with a little practice one could,
for general purposes, see almost as well as by day.

The night was terribly cold, which I felt all the more owing to the
fever, as I hung resting my head on the padded pommel of the saddle and
my legs and arms dangling at the sides. A howling, cutting wind blew and
made it impossible to cover one's self up with blankets, as they were
constantly being blown away, no matter how well one tucked one's self in
them.

There was a certain picturesque weirdness in these night marches in the
desert--when one could dissociate one's self from the discomforts. The
camel men had some sad, plaintive songs of their own--quite melodious and
in good tune with the accompaniment of dingling bells hanging from the
camels' necks. There was a musician in our party--Ali Murat's young
brother--who carried a flute in his girdle during the day, but played
upon the instrument the whole night--some doleful tunes of his own
composition, which were not bad. True, when one had listened to the same
tune, not only scores but hundreds of times during one night, one rather
felt the need of a change, but still even the sound of his flute was a
great relief in the dreary night marches. Occasionally, when the fancy
took him, and he made some variations in the airs, the camel men, who
slept while mechanically walking, would join in to sing in a chorus.

Overhead the stars gleamed with a brightness that we can never dream of
seeing in Europe, and in the distance we now began to perceive some
phantom-like hills rising from the whitish-grey surface of the desert. A
good deal of the poetry of the deser