1
1850.
Travels of M. Huc.
665
tain of Burham-bota, concerning which the missionaries record the most incredible stories of its being enveloped in noxious gases, espe- cially carbonic acid, so that horses and men can only advance over it a few steps at a time, and are constantly falling down asphyxiated. It is possible that the elevation rising, as the mountain does, out of the high upland of Koko-nor, is sufficiently great to affect the brain and stomach. Mount Juga, which followed, presented equally formidable difficulties in a passage effected amid wind and snow. Our missiona- ries adopted the more comfortable than dignified alternative of sitting on their horses with their faces to the tail, thus literally backing through the storm. Mount Juga divided Tartary from Tibet, so the Tartar escort left them here, but there were still 2000 armed men be- longing to the caravan itself.
Early in December they crossed the Bayan kara, a spur which separates the headwaters of the Hwang Ho from those flowing to the Kin-sha Kiáng. Beyond this they came to a valley where argols were abundant, and water was to be obtained beneath the ice-the two great luxuries of Tibetan and Tartar travel. Approaching the next or "Tortuous Water," one of
day the Muru-ussu 木魯烏蘇 the head-streams of the Kin-sha Kiing 金沙江、 or "Golden Sand R." they saw a herd of more than fifty wild buffaloes that had got caught in the ice, and could not extricate themselves. Eagles and crows had torn out their eyes!t This is another heavy demand upon the reader's good faith. Wild horses were also now seen frequently on the uplands. As they proceeded on their journey the cold kept increasing. It cer- tainly was a trying time of the year to be journeying in the uplands of Tibet. Camels, horses, oxen, and men, all suffered alike. Many animals fell victims to the severity of the weather. One young lama died by the wayside, looking like a figure of wax in the icy air. The caravan began to break up. The oxen could not keep up with the camels and horses, and there were not argols enough at the night sta- tions to support life in the whole caravan, More than forty men were
*
[Klaproth (in Timkowski) speaks of some of these mountains as being infect-
ed with thick fogs, and producing poisonous herbs; and M. Huc may here refer
巴爾布哈
to this peculiarity. Mt. Burham-bota lies northwest of the sources of the Yellow R ]
† [This incident will not appear incredible (though it is probably unusual even in Koko-nor) to those acquainted with northern regions; on the rivers in North America, ice forms so rapidly at times that small steamboats are unable to force their way through it, and have been known to be frozen in midstream till a thaw liberated them. But M. Huc was now traveling on the parallel of Alexandria in Egypt!]
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