Page:Mongolia, the Tangut country, and the solitudes of northern Tibet vol 2 (1876).djvu/41

Rh drop in. On one of these occasions our guests stole our last axe and hammer, trifling but indispensable articles for our journey. No others could be obtained, and it was useless attempting to recover the stolen ones. We therefore substituted a hand-saw for the axe, and in the place of a hammer we made use of a big stone, which we carried with us and used every day to drive the iron tent pegs into the frozen ground.

As soon as we had obtained new camels, we hurried to Kalgan by forced marches, only stopping for two days in the Suma-hada mountains to hunt the argali; this time I succeeded in bagging two old rams. Another accident happened to us on the road. My friend's horse took fright, shied, and ran away. Michail Alexandrovitch was too weak to keep his seat on horseback, and fell head foremost on the frozen ground, so heavily that we picked him up insensible. However, he soon came to himself, only suffering a slight contusion.

The influence of the warmth of China on this border land of Mongolia was very remarkable; on calm days or with gentle south-westerly winds it was quite warm during the day. On the loth December the thermometer marked 2·5° Cent. (35° Fahr.) in the shade. But no sooner did a westerly or north-westerly wind spring up than it became cold. The night frosts were generally moderate; the thermometer at sunrise did not descend below −29·7° Cent. (−20° Fahr.), but after a cloudy night it only registered −6·5° Cent. (20° Fahr.). The weather