Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/54

42 these vast panoramas of land and water travel waving ranks of these beautiful birds, shimmering and undulating like autumn spiderwebs floating in the air.

However, these visions suddenly faded as though they had never been; for, as I gazed out over the willow bushes to the deserted shoal, I heard right near me the dull trumpeting and whirring of the powerful wings of a new, low-flying flock of geese, and automatically raised my gun to race the leader by a few feet, without ever stopping to think that my leaden messenger might cut the life-thread of some bird dreamer or of some bold conquistador. But then something stopped me; and I raised my head, slowly brought my gun down and dreamily watched the flock disappear on the horizon. When they were out of sight, I turned and continued my own journey up along the river bank.

As the road moulded itself to the curves of the stream, there stretched out on the left great areas of those marvellously furrowed Chinese fields of kaoliang, millet and wheat, interspersed with sections of soya beans. Chinese and Manchus worked everywhere through the fields and in their vegetable patches around the small hamlets or detached fang-tzu which clustered in the shadows of tall trees farther back from the river bank.

Toward the end of a long day's ride we came, at about four in the afternoon, upon a most difficult stretch of road through a section that was all under water. The road became a bog, full of holes and ruts, into which our horses constantly stumbled and plunged, until we took on the appearance of statues of fresh clay, for we were spattered from head to foot with the sticky, yellow mud. In this plight we met some Khorch'ins, nodding on their carefully advancing camels. They told our guide that heavy snows had fallen on the La Lin during the winter