THE ALAI RANGE OF MOUNTAINS IN THE PAMIRS.
drank its blood. We all thought to die. I thought I would do my best to go as far as possible. That is the difference between a European and an Oriental: a European thinks that a life is not so easily taken away; an Oriental is a fatalist, and will not fight for its preservation. In the evening of May Day we were all mad with raging thirst. When night fell we walked on. Two of the men could not move. They were dying. So we had to leave them. I said to them, 'Wait a little here, sleep a little, and then follow us.'
"I had to abandon much of my luggage—5,000 kronors' worth—for the camels were too weak. But I took my most important instruments with me, all my Chinese silver, my maps, and my notes. That night another camel died. I was ahead, carrying a torch to lead the way. In the night a third man gave in, and lay down in the sand and motioned to me to leave him to die. Then I abandoned everything—silver, maps, and notebooks—and took only what I could carry: two chronometers, a box of matches, ten cigarettes, and a compass. The last of the men followed. We went east. The man carried a spade and an iron pot. The spade was to dig for water; the iron pot held clotted blood, foul and putrid. Thus we staggered on, through the moving dunes of sand, till the morning of the second of May.
"When the sun rose we dug out holes in the sand, which was cold from the frost of the night, and undressed and lay down naked. With our clothes and the spade we made a little tent, which gave us just enough shelter for our heads. We lay there for ten hours. At nightfall we staggered on again, still towards the east. We advanced all the night of the second, and the morning of the third of May. On this morning, as we were stumbling along, Kasim suddenly gripped my shoulder and pointed east. He could not speak. I could see nothing. At last he whispered, 'Tamarisk!' So we walked on, and after a while I saw a green thing on the horizon.
"We reached it at last, but we could not dig. It was all sand, yards deep. But we thanked God, and munched the green foliage; and all that day we lay naked in its shadow. At nightfall I dressed, and bade Kasim follow. He lay where he was, and said not a word. I left him, and went east. I went on till one in the morning. Then I came to another tamarisk, and as the night was bitterly cold, I collected the fallen branches and made a fire. In the
