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64 'It was terribly cold,' he writes, 'and the wind from the desert had lost nothing of its violence and blew keen: so cold was it that in a few days we lost several comrades from its nip. I had to bathe, for religious purification, and went down to a stream that was frozen at the banks but not in the middle, by reason of the swift current. I plunged in, and dived sixteen times, but the biting chill of the water cut through me.'

Another fruitless expedition followed, and then Bábar seriously considered his prospects. He reflected that 'to ramble thus from hill to hill, without house or home, country or resting-place, could serve no good purpose.' His only plan was to go to the Khán his uncle. On June 16, 1502, he kept the great festival, the 'Id-i-Kurbán, at Sháhrukhíya, and then went straight to Táshkend. Mahmúd Khắn welcomed him with the hospitality of the desert, but evidently without much sympathy. When Bábar presented him with an elegant quatrain on the miseries of exile, the Khán would not commit himself on the subject: 'it was pretty evident that he had no great skill in poetic diction,' said the mortified poet, but it is also possible that the uncle thought his nephew had brought his misfortunes on his own head. The Memoirs give many curious pictures of Mongol customs, and show the character of the people from whom Bábar drew at least half his blood.

During his stay with his uncle at Táshkend, the restless Khán took a desire to lead his Mongols against Tambal, who was harassing Uratipa. The