CHAPTER XX

Summary

THE dry beds of many rivers and streams unknown to song were crossed, a few of them during some portion of the year washing over a wide space of pebbly ground; and we forded others whose volume had very much contracted during the summer drought. For some distance here and there the soil was poor, and afforded only a thin dry herbage for the sustenance of flocks of diminutive black goats, and scraggy ponies and asses, which were tended by wild unkempt urchins, who roved listlessly around their herds, or lay in the full face of the cauterising sun, crooning snatches of unearthly-sounding ditties. These were the first glimpses I had as yet obtained of a pastoral life in a region where we certainly expected to find Tartar nomads, sauntering behind browsing swarms of cattle and sheep, or dwelling in black felt tents—for the purchase of which, as curios, we had so many commissions imposed upon us before leaving Tien-tsin —and drinking mares' milk, fermented or unfermented, as may have suited their palates or desires. But everywhere else beyond these uncultivated pasturages, congregations of erratic tribes would have been as much out of place, and as much bewildered, as butterflies in Fleet Street; for all was a great grain-field and a great forest of strong stems, more thickly planted and nearly more difficult of penetration than a backwoods forest.