. Russian had served us in good
stead, though not always directly. In a conversation with the Tootai of
Schicho, for instance, our Russian had to be translated into Turki and
thence interpreted in Chinese. The more intelligent of these conversations
were about our own and other countries of the world, especially England
and Russia, who, it was rumored, had gone to war on the Afghanistan
border. But the most of them generally consisted of a series of trivial
interrogations beginning usually with: "How old are you?" Owing to our
beards, which were now full grown, and which had gained for us the
frequent title of _yeh renn_, or wild men, the guesses were far above the
mark. One was even as high as sixty years, for the reason, as was stated,
that no Chinaman could raise such a beard before that age. We were
frequently surprised at their persistence in calling us brothers when
there was no apparent reason for it, and were finally told that we must be
"because we were both named _Mister_ on our passports."

[Illustration: A LESSON IN CHINESE.]

[Illustration: A TRAIL IN THE GOBI DESERT.]

It was already dusk on the evening of August 10 when we drew up to the
hamlet of Shang-loo-shwee at the end of the Hami oasis. The Great Gobi, in
its awful loneliness, stretched out before us, like a vast ocean of
endless space. The growing darkness threw its mantle on the scene, and
left imagination to picture for us the nightmare of our boyhood days. We
seemed, as it were, to be standing at the end of the world, looking out
into the realm of nowhere. Foreboding thoughts disturbed our repose, as we
contemplated the four hundred miles of this barren stretch to the Great
Wall of China. With an early morning start, however, we struck out at once
over the eighty-five miles of the Takla Makan sands. This was the worst we
could have, for beyond the caravan station of Kooshee we would strike the
projecting limits of Mongolian Kan-su. This narrow tract, now lying to our
left between Hami and the Nan Shan mountains, is characterized by
considerable diversity in its surface, soil, and climate. Traversed by
several copious streams from the Nan Shan mountains, and the
moisture-laden currents from the Bay of Bengal and the Brahmaputra valley,
its "desert" stretches are not the dismal solitudes of the Tarim basin or
the "Black" and "Red" sands of central Asia. Water is found almost
everywhere near the surface, and springs bubble up in the hollows, o