direction I chose. The old Chinese road lay southeast, and the men spoke of a track that led northward, so that our route midway between the two should bring us into the desert’s heart.

It was on the evening of the fourth day that, far off on the northeast horizon I remarked what seemed like some faint cloud hanging[15] in the sky. After looking at it through my glass, I pointed it out to Islam, saying, “Snow,” but he insisted it was but cloud.

[15]

But next evening again we beheld it, the same form, the same direction, and not a cloud beside in all the brazen sky.

Far mountain beyond a doubt. If there were no hidden cities, there were at least strange hills, and snow hills must mean water. Even Islam agreed now, though I saw he would liefer have found his city of gold than all the snow hills of wild Asia.

We pressed on, and on the evening of the sixth day, as the sun was sinking to his rest, perceived what I had sought all day in vain, the faint lilac haze below the white that I have noted marks always the lower hills below high snow.

The dunes were now greatly higher and more formidable, curved half-moons of sand, most wearisome to the legs, and the camels showed their distress from lack of water, since our scanty stock permitted but a mouthful for the beasts.

On the eighth day the snow-peak gleamed more clearly, and in the light of evening the low hills showed sharp and clear maybe a bare thirty miles away.

Never a sign of water so far, and I thanked Providence greatly that we had made sixteen days’ provision, though by now I felt assured that we should discover some at the foot of the hills. The next three days to the hills were in great measure easier, the dunes were daily lower, but we had perforce to give part of our water to the camels.

On the evening of the eleventh day we reached the foot of the hills, and then, alas! the foreboding that all day had clung to me was realized. The wall of hills was, indeed, a wall, almost sheer scarped cliff like the sides of an old Indian hill-fort, and many hundred feet high, with naught at foot but a short slope of tumbled rock half-buried in sand.

That night we camped below the gloomy cliffs, and I held that our earliest preoccupation in the morning must be to seek water along the foot. Surely somewhere the melting snow must find its way 

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