Survivor: The Autobiography Part 17

The extra Symorgh carrying the eight guerrillas took up the rear. We never saw them again.

On reaching the KabulKandahar road we were confronted by a tumult. Our headlights caught a crowd of mujahedeen running hither and thither, brandis.h.i.+ng their guns and shouting frantically. Not far beyond them loomed the sinister shapes of buildings. The first jeep roared off down the road, and the second jeep and ours followed closely, while we pa.s.sengers either kept a lookout for mines or bent our heads in prayer. We could in fact have been travelling faster, but we dared not, for fear of not being able to brake in time to avoid a pothole or a mine. I wondered if we could have avoided a mine anyway, but then I realised that the local mujahedeen had sent scouts up ahead and these had lit signal flares to tell us that a particular stretch of road was clear. Proceeding like this, from signal to signal, we travelled some way. After a time, we braked hard and swerved off the road down a steep bank to the right. Lights ablaze, we headed for the foothills, but we paused briefly with a group of mujahedeen who proudly showed us the mines they had collected. Mines are simply placed on the tarmac by the army, and the same technique is employed by the mujahedeen when they manage to collect them, rather than being blown up by them. But I hadn't got time to try to make sense out of this, for I was worrying now about why we still had our lights on as we headed across country. What if the Russians had landed heli-borne troops ahead to ambush us? Sometimes I wished I hadn't such a vivid imagination.

Soon the track we were following petered out, and several mujahedeen with torches were dispatched to find it again in the darkness ahead. This was done amid several arguments about the relative correctness of the route we'd chosen. We made slow progress, but soon it became evident that the route was impa.s.sable.

But impa.s.sable or not, there was no turning back now. We all left the vehicles to walk. Maybe with no load, the drivers could coax the jeeps through the slippery uphill scree. This they did, but we had to gather rocks to build some kind of grippable surface for the tyres ahead, and progress became agonisingly slow. Sometimes a jeep would get stuck and we would have to construct a winch to haul it forwards a process that took several hours. Our hands and feet were bleeding from the rocks, and we were covered with dust.

This went on for two despairing days, but just as our water was running out, the terrain eased. We made a relatively trouble-free descent to a dry river bed, gratefully climbed into the jeeps again and roared off. The river bed was as good as a motorway after what we'd been through, but still better was to come: a village had been sighted ahead.

'Afghanistan! Afghanistan!' my companions all shouted in relieved triumph.

The only obligatory halts were those made for prayers, though even then only a few people descended most of us were too impatient. Our driver took ages, and grated on everyone's nerves.

'Do it later,' people shouted at him. 'We're nearly there!'

Placidly, he completed his prayers. Then and not before did we head off again. We were the last jeep. The others had already disappeared from view and we were on our way at speed to catch up. It was dawn, and soon we could be easily spotted by enemy aircraft.

'Never mind we'll be in Pakistan in an hour,' someone said confidently.

I was still doubtful, but the mujahedeen could hardly contain their jubilation. Another village had appeared on the horizon. Could it be that that village was in Pakistan? It seemed likely, people thought. Closer and closer we came to it. Then our engine seized.

The order was quickly given to make a run for the village, while the driver and mechanic stayed with the vehicle to see what was wrong. The village was soon reached. No, this wasn't Pakistan, they told us. Pakistan was an hour away.

At least we were sheltered and reunited with the other two vehicles. Ours limped into the village soon after, and all three were covered to prevent them from being spotted from the air. There was nothing to do now but kill time until nightfall, so we spent the day either in prayer or eating pomegranates. I'd never eaten one in my life before I travelled to Afghanistan. Now I was developing quite a taste for them. Kandahar airport was to our west, and we could see in the distance the ominous roving of helicopters and MiGs. The area we were in, however, seemed to have been untouched by the violence of the war. This may have been due to the policies of the local Russian commander.

As usual, estimates varied about how long it would actually take us to reach the border. One hour was the most optimistic, six hours the most pessimistic, but the general consensus was that we would have to spend an hour and a half driving through a narrow gorge, mined by the Russians, and here an additional danger existed. Here indeed the Russians sometimes landed heli-borne troops to ambush those entering or leaving the country by the strip of road that threaded it.

A village scout had been sent ahead to spy out the land but by late afternoon he still hadn't returned.

'He'll be back,' Abdul Rahman said.

'I hope so. If he doesn't return, it'll mean he's been either killed or captured and both those things mean the enemy is around,' I said. I thought about what Rahman had said to me when I'd broached the possibility of walking across 'They'll either catch you in the open or you'll die of thirst' he was probably right. I had better stick with the jeep, come what may, I thought.

We were all exhausted by now, after all the struggles and dashed hopes, but we still felt anxious and everyone prayed vigorously. Dusk fell, and there was still no sign of the scout. They decided to leave it in G.o.d's hands 'Insha Allah' and piled into the jeeps.

Our jeep hadn't gone a hundred yards before the engine stalled again. They'd obviously made a botched job of the repair what was needed was a new starter motor, of which we carried a spare and now when we had least time they would have to do the job properly.

As they worked I watched them in exasperation. Then an old man appeared wraith-like out of the darkness.

'The tanks are coming,' he announced.

My heart stopped. But he had spoken Pashtu, of which I only understood a little, and perhaps I had misheard him.

'Did he say the tanks are coming?' I asked Abdul Rahman.

'No,' replied Rahman. 'He said the tanks aren't coming.' But it seemed to me unlikely that the old man would have gone to the effort of following us out into the darkness to impart such non-news. Besides, one of the drivers' little boys had started to wail bitterly.

'How's the starter motor going?'

'Nearly there,' came a m.u.f.fled and frantic reply, which might have meant anything.

I looked around desperately. I couldn't believe our bad luck. Everyone was crowding round the open bonnet to conceal as far as possible the torchlight which was illuminating the mechanic's work. Our armed escort, bringing his rifle to the ready, ordered some of our men to prime the grenades for the RPG, but then it transpired that no one knew how to. What a way to perish, I thought bitterly. By now we could hear the ominous rumble of tanks quite clearly. The little boy whimpered. The rest of us were silent, gazing fearfully into the night behind us.

And then the engine fired. I think that the noise of that engine will remain the sweetest sound I shall ever hear. We piled in before you could say 'Allah' and, praying that nothing else would go wrong, bolted down the road after our companion jeeps.

Incredibly, the other jeeps had waited for us. Irrespective of danger and the possibility of escaping, I noticed that no one was ever abandoned. A frenzied search now began among the other mechanics to find the requisite nuts and bolts from their own toolkits to bolt our new starter motor securely into place. We were in open desert, and a kilometre away we could see the faint glimmer of the lights of the tanks. Oh, G.o.d, I thought . . . so near and yet so far . . . please don't let them get us now . . . All at once I found myself repeating the kalimeh, and it comforted me.

The two little boys clung to each other and wept, while the mujahedeen awkwardly tried to comfort them. I watched the tanks. Surely they could see us with their nightsights?

And then I realised that they were not heading towards us, but away from us. The patrol hadn't seen us. All of a sudden a red tracer bullet soared high into the air to the south. We couldn't make out what was going on, but one thing was certain: the Russians' attention was focused elsewhere.

An hour later we reached the mouth of the gorge. We switched our headlights off, and the jeeps filled with the murmur of prayers. I, too, cupped my hands and repeated 'Bismillah Rahman-i-Rahim . . .' once again. The tension was overpowering as we gazed up at the looming sides of the gorge, soon lost in the thick darkness.

Allah must have been with us. This last part of the journey was a kind of summation of all that was Afghanistan for me: whether the scout had actually come this far, whether he had returned or gone off somewhere else, I would never know. We had allies though: the goats and sheep gently foraging for food, and with them a shepherd. Where the terrain was so rough that apart from this strip of road the only access troops could find to it was by helicopter, a shepherd stood alone somewhere above us on the walls of the gorge. We could not see him indeed, we never saw him but his voice drifted down to us like a G.o.d's and it provided, as all Afghans do, information. After the usual formal exchange of greetings, he told us that another vehicle had pa.s.sed safely through not two hours earlier. There had been no activity since. Therefore there were probably no mines, and there could be no ambush. Our hearts leapt.

Further on there was a grim reminder that others had not been so lucky. The wreck of a burnt-out jeep lay by the side of the road.

We emerged from the gorge feeling that truly nothing could stop us now. And as if to confirm our confidence, there on the horizon we could see the twinkling electric lights of Chaman, just inside the Pakistan border. It had been two months since I had seen electric light, and even at this distance it seemed strangely miraculous, and bright.

Russian soldier and traveller. He led several expeditions to Central Asia, ama.s.sing a collection of flora and fauna, including the wild horse named after him.

The second week in June [1873] we left the high lands of Kan-su and crossed the threshold of the desert of Ala-shan. The sand drifts now lay before us like a boundless sea, and it was not without sundry misgivings that we entered this forbidding realm.

Without sufficient means to enable us to hire a guide, we went alone, risking all dangers and difficulties, the more imminent because the year before, while travelling with the Tangutan caravan, I could only note down by stealth, and often at haphazard, the landmarks and direction of the route. This itinerary was of course inaccurate, but now it served as our only guide.

We were fifteen days marching from Tajing to Din-yuan-ing, and safely accomplished this difficult journey, only once nearly losing ourselves in the desert. This happened on 21 June between Lake Serik-dolon and the well of Shangin-dalai. Having left Serik-dolon early in the morning, we marched through miles of loose sands, and at last came to an expanse of clay where the track divided. We had not noticed this spot on the outward journey, and had therefore to guess which of the two roads would lead to our destination. What made it worse was that the angle of bifurcation being acute, we could not decide, even with the aid of a compa.s.s, which we ought to take. The track to the right being more beaten, we determined to follow it, but after all we were mistaken, for having gone a few miles a number of other tracks crossed ours. This fairly puzzled us; however, we still pressed forward, till at length a well-beaten road joined the one we had first chosen. This we durst not follow, for it went we knew not whither, nor could we return to the place where the roads first branched off. Choosing the lesser of two evils, we resolved to persevere in our first route, hoping soon to see the group of hills at whose foot lies the well of Shangin-dalai. But it was midday, and the intense heat obliged us to halt for two or three hours. On resuming our march, with the aid of the compa.s.s we steered in the same direction as before, till at length we discerned a small group of hills to our right. These we supposed to be the landmark of the Shangin-dalai, but they were still a long way off, and the dust which pervaded the atmosphere the whole day prevented our seeing their outline distinctly even with a gla.s.s.

Evening fell and we halted for the night, fully confident that these hills were indeed those we were in search of. But on projecting our line of march on the map, I became aware how far we had diverged to the right of our proper course, and doubts arose as to whether we were really on the right road or not. In the meanwhile only five gallons of water were left for the night; our horses had had none, and were suffering such agonies of thirst that they could hardly move their legs. The question of finding the well on the morrow became one of life and death. How can I describe our feelings as we lay down to rest! Fortunately the wind fell and the dust in the air cleared off. In the morning, with the first glimmer of light, I climbed on to the top of the pile of boxes containing our collections, and carefully scanned the horizon with a gla.s.s. I could see distinctly the group of hills we had remarked the previous day, but in a direction due north of our halting-place: I could also distinguish the summit of another, which might perhaps be that of Shangin-dalai. Towards which should we direct our steps? Having taken careful bearings of the latter, and having compared its position on the map with that noted down last year, we decided to march in that direction.

In doubt and anxiety we loaded our camels and started, the hill now and then visible above the low ridges, and now and again hidden from sight. In vain we strained our eyes through the gla.s.s to see the cairn of stones ('obo') piled upon its summit; the distance was still too great to distinguish anything so small. At length, after having gone nearly seven miles from the halting-place, we descried what we sought; with strength renewed by hope we pressed onwards; and in a few more hours we stood by the side of the well, to which our animals, tortured with thirst, rushed eagerly forward.

On one of the marches through Southern Ala-shan we met a caravan of Mongol pilgrims on their way from Urga to Lha.s.sa . . . The pilgrims were marching in echelons, some distance apart, having agreed to rendezvous at Koko-nor. As the foremost files met us, they exclaimed, 'See where our brave fellows have got to!' and could hardly believe at first that we four had actually penetrated into Tibet. But what must have been the appearance of the Russian molodtsi? Exhausted with fatigue, half starved, unkempt, with ragged clothes and boots worn into holes, we were regular tatterdemalions! So completely had we lost the European aspect that when we arrived at Din-yuan-ing the natives remarked that we were the very image of their own people! i.e. of the Mongols . . .

In accordance with the plan we had previously sketched, we purposed marching straight to Urga from Din-yuan-ing, by way of the Central Gobi, a route which had never before been travelled by any European, and was therefore of the greatest scientific interest. Before starting, however, we determined to rest, and to take this opportunity of exploring more thoroughly than last time the mountains of Ala-shan . . . Here we stayed three weeks, and finally came to the conclusion that the mountains of Ala-shan are rich neither in flora nor in fauna . . .

In such arid mountains as these one would have supposed that we should not have incurred the slightest risk from water; but fate willed that we should experience every misfortune which can possibly overtake the traveller in these countries, for, without giving us the slightest warning, a deluge, such as we never remember to have seen, swept suddenly down upon us.

It was on the morning of 13 July; the summits of the mountains were enveloped in mist, a sure indication of rain. Towards midday, however, it became perfectly clear and gave every promise of a fine day, when, three hours later, all of a sudden, clouds began to settle on the mountains, and the rain poured down in buckets. Our tent was soon soaked through, and we dug small trenches to drain off the water which made its way into the interior. This continued for an hour without showing any sign of abatement, although the sky did not look threatening. The rainfall was so great that it was more than could be absorbed by the soil or retained on the steep slopes of the mountains; the consequence was that streams formed in every cleft and gorge, even falling from the precipitous cliffs, and uniting in the princ.i.p.al ravine, where our tent happened to be pitched, descended in an impetuous torrent with terrific roar and speed. Dull echoes high up in the mountains warned us of its approach, and in a few minutes the deep bed of our ravine was inundated with a turbid, coffee-coloured stream, carrying with it rocks and heaps of smaller fragments, while it dashed with such violence against the sides that the very ground trembled as though with the shock of an earthquake. Above the roar of the waters we could hear the clash of great boulders as they met in their headlong course. From the loose banks and from the upper parts of the defile whole ma.s.ses of smaller stones were detached by the force of the current and thrown up on either side of the channel, whilst trees were torn up by their roots and rent into splinters . . . Barely twenty feet from our tent rushed the torrent, destroying everything in its course. Another minute, another foot of water, and our collections, the fruit of our expedition, were irrevocably gone! . . .

Fortune, however, again befriended us. Before our tent was a small projecting ledge of rock upon which the waves threw up stones which soon formed a breakwater, and this saved us. Towards evening the rain slackened, the torrent quickly subsided, and the following morning beheld only a small stream flowing where the day before the waters of a mighty river had swept along . . .

On returning to Din-yuan-ing we equipped our caravan, bartered away our bad camels, bought new ones, and on the morning of 26 July started on our journey. Thanks to our Peking pa.s.sport and still more to the presents we bestowed on the tosalakchi who acted as regent during the Prince's14 absence, we were able to hire two guides to escort us to the border of Ala-shan, where we were to obtain others, and for this purpose the yamen (or magistracy) of Ala-shan issued an official doc.u.ment: in this way we continued to obtain guides from one banner to another; a matter of great importance, for our road lay through the wildest part of the Gobi, in a meridional direction from Ala-shan to Urga, and we could not possibly have found our way without them.

Another long series of hards.h.i.+ps now awaited us. We suffered most from the July heat, which at midday rose to 113 Fahr. in the shade, and at night was never less than 73. No sooner did the sun appear above the horizon than it scorched us mercilessly. In the daytime the heat enveloped us on all sides, above from the sun, below from the burning ground; the wind, instead of cooling the atmosphere, stirred the lower strata and made it even more intolerable. On these days the cloudless sky was of a dirty hue, the soil heated to 145 Fahr., and even higher where the sands were entirely bare, whilst at a depth of two feet from the surface it was 79.

Our tent was no protection, for it was hotter within than without, although the sides were raised. We tried pouring water on it, and on the ground inside, but this was useless, in half an hour everything was as dry as before, and we knew not whither to turn for relief.

The air, too, was terribly dry; no dew fell, and rain clouds dispersed without sending more than a few drops to earth . . . Thunderstorms rarely occurred, but the wind was incessant night and day, and sometimes blew with great violence, chiefly from the south-east and south-west. On calm days tornadoes were frequent about the middle of the day or a little later. To avoid the heat as much as possible we rose before daybreak; tea-drinking and loading the camels, however, took up so much time that we never got away before four or even five o'clock in the morning. We might have lightened the fatigue considerably by night-marching, but in that case we should have had to forgo the survey which formed so important a part of our labours . . .

The commencement of our journey was unpropitious, for on the sixth day after we left Din-yuan-ing, we lost our faithful friend Faust,15 and we ourselves nearly perished in the sands.

It was on 31 July; we had left Djaratai-dabas and had taken the direction of the Khan-ula mountains; our guide having informed us that a march of eighteen miles lay before us that day, but that we should pa.s.s two wells about five miles apart.

Having accomplished that distance, we arrived at the first, and after watering our animals, proceeded, in the full expectation of finding the second, where we intended to halt; for though it was only seven in the morning, the heat was overpowering. So confident were we that the Cossacks proposed to throw away the supply of water that we had taken in the casks, in order not to burden our camels needlessly, but fortunately I forbade their doing this. After nearly seven miles more, no well was to be seen, and the guide announced that we had gone out of our road. So he proceeded to the top of a hillock in the immediate neighbourhood to obtain a view over the surrounding country, and soon afterwards beckoned to us to follow. On rejoining him, he a.s.sured us that although we had missed the second well, a third, where he purposed pa.s.sing the night, was scarcely four miles farther. We took the direction indicated. In the meanwhile it was near midday and the heat intolerable. A strong wind stirred the hot lower atmosphere, enveloping us in sand and saline dust. Our animals suffered frightfully; especially the dogs, obliged to walk over the burning sand. We stopped several times to give them drink, and to moisten their heads as well as our own. But the supply of water now failed! Less than a gallon remained, and this we reserved for the last extremity. 'How much farther is it?' was the question we constantly put to our guide, who invariably answered that it was near, that we should see it from the next sandhill or the one after; and so we pa.s.sed on upwards of seven miles without having seen a sign of the promised well. In the meanwhile the unfortunate Faust lay down and moaned, giving us to understand that he was quite unable to walk. I then told my companion and guide to ride on, charging the latter to take Faust on his camel as he was completely exhausted. After they had ridden a mile in advance of the caravan the guide pointed out the spot where he said the well should be, apparently about three miles off. Poor Faust's doom was sealed; he was seized with fits, and Mr Pyltseff, finding it was impossible to hurry on, and too far to ride back to the caravan for a gla.s.s of water, waited till we came up, laying Faust under a clump of saxaul and covering him with saddle-felt. The poor dog became less conscious every minute, gasped two or three times, and expired. Placing his body on one of the packs, we moved on again, sorely doubting whether there were really any well in the place pointed out to us by the guide, for he had already deceived us more than once. Our situation at this moment was desperate. Only a few gla.s.ses of water left, of which we took into our mouths just enough to moisten our parched tongues; our bodies seemed on fire, our heads swam, and we were close upon fainting. In this last extremity I desired a Cossack to take a small vessel and to ride as hard as he could to the well, accompanied by the guide, ordering him to fire at the latter if he attempted to run away. They were soon hidden in a cloud of dust which filled the air, and we toiled onwards in their tracks in the most anxious suspense. At length, after half an hour, the Cossack appeared. What news does he bring? and spurring our jaded horses, which could hardly move their legs to meet him, we learned with the joy of a man who has been s.n.a.t.c.hed from the jaws of death that the well had been found! After a draught of fresh water from the vesselful that he brought, and, having wet our heads, we rode in the direction pointed out, and soon reached the well of Boro-Sondji. It was now two o'clock in the afternoon; we had, therefore, been exposed for nine consecutive hours to frightful heat, and had ridden upwards of twenty miles.

After unloading the camels, I sent a Cossack back with the Mongol for the pack which had been left on the road, by the side of which our other (Mongol) dog, who had been with us nearly two years, was laid. The poor brute had lain down underneath the pack but was still alive, and after getting a draught of water he was able to follow the men back to camp. Notwithstanding the complete prostration of our physical and moral energies, we felt the loss of Faust so keenly that we could eat nothing, and slept but little all night. The following morning we dug a small grave and buried in it the remains of our faithful friend. As we discharged this last duty to him my companion and I wept like children. Faust had been our friend in every sense of the word! How often in moments of trouble had we caressed and played with him, half forgetting our griefs! For nearly three years had he served us faithfully through the frost and storms of Tibet, the rain and snow of Kan-su, and the wearisome marches of many thousand miles, and at last had fallen a victim to the burning heat of the desert; this too within two months of the termination of the expedition!

The route taken by most of the caravans of pilgrims from Urga to Ala-shan on their way to Tibet turns a little to the west at the Khan-ula mountains, afterwards taking the direction of the Khalka country. We did not follow this road because the wells along it were not sufficiently numerous . . . Our course lay due north, and after crossing some spurs of the Kara-narin-ula entered the country of the Urutes, which lies wedge-shaped between Ala-shan and the Khalka country.

This country is considerably higher than Ala-shan, but soon begins to sink towards the Galpin Gobi plain, where the elevation is only 3,200 feet; north of this again it rises towards the Hurku mountains which form a distinct definition between the barren desert on the south and the more steppe-like region on the north. There is also a slope from the ranges bordering the valley of the Hoang-ho westward to the Galpin Gobi, which forms a depressed basin, no higher than Djaratai-dabas, extending as we were informed by the Mongols, for twenty-five days' march from east to west.

The soil of the Galpin Gobi, in that eastern portion of it which we crossed, consists of small pebbles or of saline clay almost devoid of vegetation; the whole expanse of country to the Hurku range being a desert as wild and barren as that of Ala-shan, but of a somewhat different character. The sand drifts, so vast in the latter country, are here of comparatively small extent, and in their stead we find bare clay, s.h.i.+ngle, and naked crumbling rocks (chiefly gneiss) scattered in low groups. Vegetation consists of stunted, half-withered clumps of saxaul, karmyk, budarhana, and a few herbaceous plants, the chief amongst which is the sulhir; the elms are the most striking features in the Urute country, forming in places small clumps; bushes of wild peach are also occasionally met with, such as are never seen in the desert of Ala-shan. Animal life in these regions is very scant; birds and mammals are the same as in Ala-shan. You may often ride for hours together without seeing a bird, not even a stone-chat or a kolodjoro; nevertheless, wherever there are wells or springs, Mongols are to be found, with a few camels, and large numbers of sheep and goats.

During our progress through this country, in the latter half of August, the heat was excessive, although never so high as in Ala-shan. Winds blew ceaselessly night and day, often increasing to the violence of a gale, and filling the air with clouds of saline dust and sand, the latter choking up many of the wells; but these were more frequently destroyed by the rains, which, although rare, came down with terrific force, and for an hour or two afterwards large rivers continued to flow, silting up the wells (always dug on the lower ground) with mud and sand. It would be impossible to travel here without a guide thoroughly acquainted with the country; for destruction lies in wait for you at every step. In fact this desert, like that of Ala-shan, is so terrible that, in comparison with it, the deserts of Northern Tibet may be called fruitful. There, at all events, you may often find water and good pastureland in the valleys; here, there is neither the one nor the other, not even a single oasis; everywhere the silence of the valley of death.

The well-known Sahara can hardly be more terrible than these deserts, which extend for many hundreds of miles in length and breadth. The Hurku hills, where we crossed, are the northern definition of the wildest and most sterile part of the Gobi, and form a distinct chain with a direction from SE to WNW; how far either way we could not say positively; but, according to the information we received from the natives, they are prolonged for a great distance towards the south-east, reaching the mountains bordering the valley of the Hoang-ho, while on the west they extend, with a few interruptions, to other far distant mountains of no great elevation. If the latter statement may be relied upon, we may conclude that they unite with the Thian Shan, and supply, as it were, a connecting link between that range and the In-shan system; an extremely interesting fact and one worthy of the attention of future explorers.

Their width where we crossed them is a little over seven miles, and their apparent height hardly above a thousand feet . . .

South of the Hurku lies the great trade route from Peking, via Kuku-khoto and Bautu, to Hami, Urumchi and Kulja, branching off near the spring of Bortson, where we encamped for the night . . .

On crossing the frontier of the Khalka country we entered the princ.i.p.ality of Tushetu-khan, and hastened by forced marches to Urga, which was now the goal we were so desirous of reaching. Nearly three years of wanderings, attended by every kind of privation and hards.h.i.+p, had so worn us out physically and morally that we felt most anxious for a speedy termination of our journey; besides which, we were now travelling through the wildest part of the Gobi, where want of water, heat, storms of wind, in short every adverse condition combined against us, and day by day undermined what little of our strength remained . . .

The mirage, that evil genius of the desert, mocked us almost daily, and conjured up such tantalising visions of tremulous water that even the rocks of the neighbouring hills appeared as though reflected in it. Severe heat and frequent storms of wind prevented our sleeping quietly at night, much as we needed rest after the arduous day's march.

But not to us alone was the desert of Mongolia an enemy. Birds which began to make their appearance in the latter half of August suffered equally from thirst and hunger. We saw flocks of geese and ducks resting at the smallest pools, and small birds flew to our tent so exhausted with starvation as to allow us to catch them in the hand. We found several of these feathered wanderers quite dead, and in all probability numbers of them perish in their flight across the desert.

The chief migration of birds was in September, and by the 13th of that month we had counted twenty-four varieties. From our observations the geese directed their flight not due south but south-east towards the northern bend of the Hoang-ho.

Eighty-seven miles north of the Hurku hills we crossed another trade route from Kuku-khoto to Ulia.s.sutai; practicable for carts although the traffic is mostly on camels . . .

Northwards the character of the Gobi again changes, and this time for the better. The sterile desert becomes a steppe, more and more fruitful as we advance to the north. The s.h.i.+ngle and gravel are in turn succeeded by sand mixed in small quant.i.ties with clay. The country becomes extremely undulating. The gradual slopes of low hills intersect one another in every possible direction, and earn for this region the Mongol name Kangai i.e. hilly. This continues for upwards of a hundred miles to the north of the Ulia.s.sutai post road, when the waterless steppe touches the margin of the basin of Lake Baikal; here finally, at Hangindaban, you find yourself among groups and ridges of rocky hills, beyond which lie the well-watered districts of Northern Mongolia . . .

Our impatience to reach Urga kept ever increasing as we approached it, and we counted the time no longer by months or weeks but by days. At length after crossing the Hangin-daban range we arrived on the banks of the Tola, the first river we had made acquaintance with in Mongolia. For 870 miles, i.e. between Kan-su and this river, we had not seen a single stream or lake, only stagnant pools of brackish rainwater. Forests now appeared, darkening the steep slopes of the Mount Khan-ola. Under these grateful circ.u.mstances we at last accomplished our final march, and on 17 September entered Urga, where we received a warm welcome from our Consul. I will not undertake to describe the moment when we heard our mother-tongue, when we met again our countrymen, and experienced once more European comforts. We inquired eagerly what was going on in the civilised world; we devoured the contents of the letters awaiting us; we gave vent to our joy like children; it was only after a few days that we came to ourselves and began to realise the luxury to which our wanderings had rendered us for so long a time strangers . . . After resting a week at Urga, we proceeded to Kiakhta, which we reached on 1 October 1873.

Our journey was ended. Its success had surpa.s.sed all the hopes we entertained when we crossed for the first time the borders of Mongolia. Then an uncertain future lay before us; now, as we called to mind all the difficulties and dangers we had gone through, we could not help wondering at the good fortune which had invariably attended us everywhere. Yes! in the most adverse circ.u.mstances, Fortune had been ever constant, and ensured the success of our undertaking: many a time when it hung on a thread a happy destiny rescued us, and gave us the means of accomplis.h.i.+ng, as far as our strength would permit, the exploration of the least known and most inaccessible countries of Inner Asia.

English explorer. During an 1874 expedition to Australia, he was forced to separate from his companion, Gibson.

We were now 90 miles from the Circus water, and 110 from Fort McKellar. The horizon to the west was still obstructed by another rise three or four miles away; but to the west-north-west I could see a line of low stony ridges, ten miles off. To the south was an isolated little hill, six or seven miles away. I determined to go to the ridges, when Gibson complained that his horse could never reach them, and suggested that the next rise to the west might reveal something better in front. The ridges were five miles away, and there were others still further preventing a view. When we reached them we had come 98 miles from the Circus. Here Gibson, who was always behind, called out and said his horse was going to die, or knock up, which are synonymous terms in this region . . . The hills to the west were 2530 miles away, and it was with extreme regret I was compelled to relinquish a further attempt to reach them. Oh, how ardently I longed for a camel! how ardently I gazed upon this scene! At this moment I would even my jewel eternal have sold for power to span the gulf that lay between! But it could not be, situated as I was; compelled to retreat of course with the intention of coming again with a larger supply of water now the sooner I retreated the better. These far-off hills were named the Alfred and Marie Range, in honour of their Royal Highnesses the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Edinburgh. Gibson's horse having got so bad had placed us both in a great dilemma; indeed, ours was a most critical position. We turned back upon our tracks, when the cob refused to carry his rider any further and tried to lie down. We drove him another mile on foot, and down he fell to die. My mare, the Fair Maid of Perth, was only too willing to return; she had now to carry Gibson's saddle and things, and we went away walking and riding by turns of half an hour. The cob, no doubt, died where he fell; not a second thought could be bestowed on him.

When we got back to about thirty miles from the Kegs I was walking, and having concluded in my mind what course to pursue, I called to Gibson to halt till I walked up to him. We were both excessively thirsty, for walking had made us so, and we had scarcely a pint of water left between us. However, of what we had we each took a mouthful, which finished the supply, and I then said for I couldn't speak before 'Look here, Gibson, you see we are in a most terrible fix with only one horse, therefore only one can ride, and one must remain behind. I shall remain; and now listen to me. If the mare does not get water soon she will die; therefore ride right on; get to the Kegs, if possible, tonight, and give her water. Now the cob is dead there'll be all the more for her; let her rest for an hour or two, and then get over a few more miles by morning, so that early tomorrow you will sight the Rawlinson, at twenty-five miles from the Kegs. Stick to the tracks, and never leave them. Leave as much water in one keg for me as you can afford after watering the mare and filling up your own bags, and, remember, I depend upon you to bring me relief. Rouse Mr Tietkens, get fresh horses and more water bags, and return as soon as you possibly can. I shall of course endeavour to get down the tracks also.'

He then said if he had a compa.s.s he thought he could go better at night. I knew he didn't understand anything about compa.s.ses, as I had often tried to explain them to him. The one I had was a Gregory's Patent; of a totally different construction from ordinary instruments of the kind, and I was very loath to part with it, as it was the only one I had. However, he was so anxious for it that I gave it him, and he departed. I sent one final shout after him to stick to the tracks, to which he replied, 'All right', and the mare carried him out of sight almost immediately. That was the last ever seen of Gibson.

I walked slowly on, and the further I walked the more thirsty I became. I had thirty miles to go to reach the Kegs, which I could not reach until late tomorrow at the rate I was travelling, and I did not feel sure that I could keep on at that . . .

24 April to 1 May So soon as it was light I was again upon the horse tracks, and reached the Kegs about the middle of the day. Gibson had been here, and watered the mare, and gone on. He had left me a little over two gallons of water in one keg, and it may be imagined how glad I was to get a drink. I could have drunk my whole supply in half an hour, but was compelled to economy, for I could not tell how many days would elapse before a.s.sistance could come: it could not be less than five, it might be many more. After quenching my thirst a little I felt ravenously hungry, and on searching among the bags, all the food I could find was eleven sticks of dirty, sandy, smoked horse, averaging about an ounce and a half each, at the bottom of a pack bag. I was rather staggered to find that I had little more than a pound weight of meat to last me until a.s.sistance came. However, I was compelled to eat some at once, and devoured two sticks raw, as I had no water to spare to boil them in.

After this I sat in what shade the trees afforded, and reflected on the precariousness of my position. I was 60 miles from water, and 80 from food, my messenger could hardly return before six days, and I began to think it highly probable that I should be dead of hunger and thirst long before anybody could possibly arrive. I looked at the keg; it was an awkward thing to carry empty. There was nothing else to carry water in, as Gibson had taken all the smaller water bags, and the large ones would require several gallons of water to soak the canvas before they began to tighten enough to hold water. The keg when empty, with its rings and straps, weighed fifteen pounds, and now it had twenty pounds of water in it. I could not carry it without a blanket for a pad for my shoulder, so that with my revolver and cartridge pouch, knife, and one or two other small things on my belt, I staggered under a weight of about fifty pounds when I put the keg on my back. I only had fourteen matches.

After I had thoroughly digested all points of my situation. I concluded that if I did not help myself Providence wouldn't help me. I started, bent double by the keg, and could only travel so slowly that I thought it scarcely worthwhile to travel at all. I became so thirsty at each step I took, that I longed to drink up every drop of water I had in the keg, but it was the elixir of death I was burdened with, and to drink it was to die, so I restrained myself. By next morning I had only got about three miles away from the Kegs, and to do that I travelled mostly in the moonlight. The next few days I can only pa.s.s over as they seemed to pa.s.s with me, for I was quite unconscious half the time, and I only got over about five miles a day.

To people who cannot comprehend such a region it may seem absurd that a man could not travel faster than that. All I can say is, there may be men who could do so, but most men in the position I was in would simply have died of hunger and thirst, for by the third or fourth day couldn't tell which my horsemeat was all gone. I had to remain in what scanty shade I could find during the day, and I could only travel by night.

When I lay down in the shade in the morning I lost all consciousness, and when I recovered my senses I could not tell whether one day or two or three had pa.s.sed. At one place I am sure I must have remained over 48 hours. At a certain place on the road that is to say, on the horse tracks at about 15 miles from the Kegs at 25 miles the Rawlinson could again be sighted I saw that the tracks of the two loose horses we had turned back from there had left the main line of tracks, which ran east and west, and had turned about east-south-east, and the tracks of the Fair Maid of Perth, I was grieved to see, had gone on them also. I felt sure Gibson would soon find his error, and return to the main line. I was unable to investigate this any further in my present position. I followed them about a mile, and then returned to the proper line, anxiously looking at every step to see if Gibson's horse tracks returned into them.

They never did, nor did the loose horse tracks either. Generally speaking, whenever I saw a shady desert oak tree there was an enormous bull-dog ants' nest under it, and I was prevented from sitting in its shade. On what I thought was the 27th I almost gave up the thought of walking any further, for the exertion in this dreadful region, where the triodia was almost as high as myself, and as thick as it could grow, was quite overpowering, and being starved, I felt quite light-headed. After sitting down, on every occasion when I tried to get up again, my head would swim round, and I would fall down oblivious for some time. Being in a chronic state of burning thirst, my general plight was dreadful in the extreme. A bare and level sandy waste would have been Paradise to walk over compared to this. My arms, legs, thighs, both before and behind, were so punctured with spines, it was agony only to exist; the slightest movement and in went more spines, where they broke off in the clothes and flesh, causing the whole of the body that was punctured to gather into minute pustules, which were continually growing and bursting. My clothes, especially inside my trousers, were a perfect ma.s.s of p.r.i.c.kly points.

My great hope and consolation now was that I might soon meet the relief party. But where was the relief party? Echo could only answer where? About the 29th I had emptied the keg, and was still over 20 miles from the Circus. Ah! who can imagine what 20 miles means in such a case? But in this April's ivory moonlight I plodded on, desolate indeed, but all undaunted, on this lone, unhallowed sh.o.r.e. At last I reached the Circus, just at the dawn of day. Oh, how I drank! how I reeled! how hungry I was! how thankful I was that I had so far at least escaped from the jaws of that howling wilderness, for I was once more upon the range, though still 20 miles from home. There was no sign of the tracks, of anyone having been here since I left it. The water was all but gone. The solitary eagle still was there. I wondered what could have become of Gibson; he certainly had never come here, and how could he reach the fort without doing so?

I was in such a miserable state of mind and body that I refrained from more vexatious speculations as to what had delayed him: I stayed here, drinking and drinking, until about 10 a.m., when I crawled away over the stones down from the water. I was very footsore, and could only go at a snail's pace. Just as I got clear of the bank of the creek. I heard a faint squeak, and looking about I saw, and immediately caught, a small dying wallaby, whose marsupial mother had evidently thrown it from her pouch. It only weighed about two ounces, and was scarcely furnished yet with fur. The instant I saw it, like an eagle I pounced upon it and ate it, living, raw, dying fur, skin, bones, skull, and all. The delicious taste of that creature I shall never forget. I only wished I had its mother and father to serve in the same way. I had become so weak that by late at night, I had only accomplished 11 miles, and I lay down about 5 miles from the Gorge of Tarns, again choking for water. While lying down here, I thought I heard the sound of the footfalls of a galloping horse going campwards, and vague ideas of Gibson on the Fair Maid or she without him entered my head. I stood up and listened, but the sound had died away upon the midnight air. On the 1st of May, as I afterwards found, at one o'clock in the morning, I was walking again, and reached the Gorge of Tarns long before daylight, and could again indulge in as much water as I desired; but it was exhaustion I suffered from, and I could hardly move.

My reader may imagine with what intense feelings of relief I stepped over the little bridge across the water, staggered into the camp at daylight, and woke Mr Tietkens, who stared at me as though I had been one new risen from the dead. I asked him had he seen Gibson, and to give me some food. I was of course prepared to hear that Gibson had never reached the camp; indeed, I could see but two people in their blankets the moment I entered the fort, and by that I knew he could not be there. None of the horses had come back, and it appeared that I was the only one of six living creatures two men and four horses that had returned, or were now ever likely to return, from that desert, for it was now, as I found, nine days since I last saw Gibson.

English travel writer and explorer who, in 1935, made an 'undeservedly successful' overland trek from Peking to Kashmir. He was accompanied on the 3,500-mile journey by the Swiss journalist, Ella 'Kini' Maillart.

At the foot of the last pa.s.s we halted for a short rest, then climbed it very slowly. I took charge of the camels, for on these narrow and vertiginous tracks the donkeys needed all the men's attention. The Pearl was moving stiffly and eyed the world with distaste, but when we reached the last razor-backed ridge it was pleasant to look back on the peaks ma.s.sed behind us round the towering snows of the Tokuz Dawan and to reflect that from now on it would be all downhill. Below us, hidden by a dust haze, lay the desert.

We plunged down sharply by the zigzag track into a tremendous gorge, a huge gash in the side of the mountain between whose high enclosing walls we marched with the unfamiliar sense of being shut in, of no longer having distances about us. At four o'clock we made camp near a little salty water hole, after a good stage of ten hours.

The next day, 13 June, was a long one. Soon after dawn we moved off down the narrow, winding gorge, following a dried-up stream-bed through a succession of highly romantic grottoes. Presently it widened, and we pa.s.sed clumps of flowering tamarisk at which the camels s.n.a.t.c.hed greedily. Everything was deathly still; only a little bird from time to time uttered a short and plaintive song whose sweet notes echoed anomalously under those frowning cliffs. The silence, the tortuous and hidden way, made me feel as if we were engaged on a surprise attack.

After five hours we came to a place which both our map and our guides called Muna Bulak. But once more 'adam yok', the looked-for tents were absent, and there was only a little spring of very salt and brackish water. We filled the keg and went on for two more hours, debouching from the gorge into a huge desert of sand and piedmont gravel which stretched as far as the eye could see. The mountains with which for so long we had struggled at close quarters were relegated to a hazy backcloth.

At one o'clock we halted, cooked a meal, and wolfed great lumps of boiled mutton. The sun beat down on us savagely and we propped a felt up with tent-poles to make a little shade; this was a sharp contrast to the uplands. We drank a great deal of curiously tasting tea.

At dusk we started off again, marching north-west through a waste of tufted dunes. As the light faded the low patches of scrub took on strange shapes, became dark monsters which, as you watched them, moved; it was all very like that night-march with the Prince of Dzun. We were a long way from water and the men took the caravan along at a good pace. Presently we came out of the dunes into stark desert, as flat and naked and unfriendly as a sheet of ice. The camels were groaning with exhaustion and had to be tugged along. There was no landmark, no incident, to mark the pa.s.sing of the hours; the stars looked down dispa.s.sionately on the small and battered company lungeing blindly forward in the darkness. I whooped mechanically at the camels till my voice went. The Turkis were imprecise about our programme, and we wished that we knew how much longer the ordeal would last.

It ended at half past one in the morning. We had done two stages of more than seven hours each and the camels were dead beat. They slumped down in their tracks and we unloaded and lay down in the lee of the baggage, refres.h.i.+ng ourselves with the dregs of the last brandy bottle and a little salt water. Then we slept, sprawling like corpses on the iron-hard ground.

After two hours Tuzun woke us. Feeling stiff and stale, we made tea with the last of the water, loaded up, and moved off. Sunrise showed a discouragingly empty world; even the mountains were already lost behind the dust haze which is chronic in the Tarim Basin. We stumbled muzzily on, uncomfortably aware that it would soon be very hot.

Presently we heard a kind of roaring sound. Kini, who had crossed the Kizil k.u.m and claimed to know something of deserts, said it was the wind in some sand dunes we could see to the north. Happily she was wrong; another half-mile brought us to the lip of a low cliff beneath which a wide stony bed was noisily threaded by the channel of the Cherchen Darya. We scrambled down and watered the animals in a current that was opaque with yellow silt and looked as thick as paint.

Tuzun spoke hopefully of reaching Cherchen that day, and we climbed out of the riverbed for the last lap. The sun was well up now; the heat seemed to us terrific and was in fact considerable. The world around us jigged liquidly in a haze. Before long we hit a bad belt of dunes about a mile wide. The soft sand was cruel going for tired animals; once Number Two lost his balance and collapsed sideways, and we had to unload him before he could rise. When we struggled out again on to hard desert there was not much life left in any of us. We crawled on for an hour or two, but the sun was pitiless and at last Tuzun called a halt on a little bluff above the river.

Here we lay up for five hours, and I disgraced myself by drinking a whole kettle of tea while Kini was bathing in the river. She came back so glowing and self-righteous that in the end I went and bathed too, wallowing in the swift khaki water and speculating lazily about Cherchen. Our ignorance, our chronic lack of advance information, must be unexampled in the annals of modern travel. We had neither of us, before starting, read one in twenty of the books that we ought to have read, and our preconceptions of what a place was going to be like were never based, as they usefully could have been, on the experience of our few but ill.u.s.trious predecessors in these regions. Cherchen, for all we knew or could find out, might be a walled city, or a cl.u.s.ter of tents, or almost any other variation on the urban theme. This state of affairs reflected discreditably on us but was not without its compensations. It was pleasant, in a way, to be journeying always into the blue, with no Baedeker to eliminate surprise and marshal our first impressions in advance; it was pleasant, now, to be within one march of Cherchen and to have not the very slightest idea what Cherchen was going to look like.

We enjoyed the halt. The felt gave very little shade, and a light wind that had sprung up coated our somnolence with half an inch of sand; but at least we were no longer moving, no longer pressing forward. We dreaded pa.s.sionately but surrept.i.tiously, as children dread the end of holidays the imminent beginning of another night-march of indeterminable length.

At four o'clock, though it was still vindictively hot, we began to load up. The skeleton camels whose thick wool now appeared, and was, anomalous but who had had no time to shed it knelt and rose again not without protest. With far-fetched prudence, fearing an examination of our effects like the one in Lanchow, I removed from my bundled overcoat, which came from Samarkand and should properly have clothed a cavalry officer in the Red Army of the Soviet Union, b.u.t.tons embossed with the hammer and sickle. At half past four we started.

Men and animals moved groggily; this was our fourth stage in thirty-six hours, and even Tuzun, who had started fresh five days ago, showed signs of wear and tear. Very soon we came into dunes again; the animals floundered awkwardly and the march lost momentum. The camels showed signs of distress; one of the donkeys was dead lame and another, from sheer weakness, bowled over like a shot rabbit on a downhill slope. A kind of creeping paralysis was overtaking the expedition.

We knew that we were near Cherchen, but there comes a point, while you are suffering hards.h.i.+p or fatigue, when you cannot see beyond the urgent business of endurance. This point we had reached. We might have been a month's journey from our goal, instead of a very few hours, for all the difference that its proximity now made to us. We could no more think than we could see beyond the next ridge of dunes; our reprieve, no doubt, had been signed, but we were still in prison. Our minds told us that this was the last lap; but our hearts and our bodies could take only an academic kind of comfort from the a.s.surance. We were absorbed in the task of finis.h.i.+ng a difficult stage.

The sun began to set. The donkeys tottered along very reluctantly, and the tired camels wore that kind of dignity which you a.s.sociate with defeat; it was clear that we should not make Cherchen that night. Then, suddenly, from the top of a high dune, my eye caught a strip of queer eruptions on the horizon to the north-west; the skyline, for months either flat and featureless or jagged and stark, was here pimpled with something that did not suggest a geological formation. I got out my field-gla.s.ses . . .