cart drawn by a camel
and guarded by Cossacks mounted on camels, their uniforms and smart
white visored caps looking very comical on the top of their shambling
steeds. Most of the caravans were in charge of Chinese, and they
thronged about us if a chance offered to inspect the strange trap;
especially the light spider wheels aroused their interest. They tried to
lift them, measured the rim with thumb and finger, investigated the
springs, their alert curiosity showing an intelligence that I missed in
the Mongols, to whom we were just a sort of travelling circus, honours
being easy between the buggy, and Jack and me.

We were now in the Gobi. The rich green of the grassland had given way
to a sparse vegetation of scrub and tufts of coarse grass and weeds, and
the poor horses were hard put to get enough, even though they grazed all
night. The country, which was more broken and seamed with gullies and
rivers of sand, Sha Ho, had taken on a hard, sunbaked, repellent look,
brightened only by splendid crimson and blue thistles. The wells were
farther apart, and sometimes they were dry, and there were anxious hours
when we were not sure of water for ourselves, still less for the horses.
One well near a salt lake was rather brackish. This lake is a landmark
in the entire region round; it seems to be slowly shrinking, and many
caravans camp here to collect the salt, which is taken south. The
weather, too, had changed; the days were hotter and dryer, but the
nights were cool and refreshing always.

For eleven days we saw no houses but the two telegraph stations, save
once early in the morning when we came without warning upon a lamassery
that seemed to start up out of the ground; the open desert hides as well
as reveals. It was a group of flat-roofed, whitewashed buildings, one
larger than the rest, all wrapped in silence. There was no sign of life
as we passed except a red lama who made a bright spot against the white
wall, and a camel tethered in a corner, and it looked very solitary and
desolate, set down in the middle of the great, empty, dun-coloured
plain.

I had now separated from my travelling companions, cheering the friendly
Mongols with some of my bountiful supply of cigarettes. As they rode off
they gave me the Mongol greeting, "Peace go with you." I should have
been glad to have kept on the red lama to Urga, for he had been very
helpful in looking after my wants, and had befriended poor Jack, who was
quite done up