C H A P T E R L X X I .
FROM S A R Y K AM ISH TO K A P L A N ICIR.
Mounting the Ust Urt.—The well Uzun Kuyu.— Saxaul and other fuel.
—Bread baken on the coals.— Capture of a gazelle.— Remains' of
sun worship.— Troubles with attendantsS-Breakfast on a camel’s
back.—-The wells of Kazakhli.—The bay of Kaplan Kir.—A dry
ocean bed.— Kaplan Kir not an island.—The wells of Kum-sebshem.
■—Ascent from the bed of Kaplan Kir.
WrE ascended from the lacustrine bed of Sary
Kamish at half-past 2 on the afternoon of
November 14th, to make for Uzun Kuyu, or “ deep
well,” 27 miles distant. After toiling up a hill we found
ourselves on an immense table-land, bounded on the side
of the lake with cliffs, that still bore traces of being
water-worn. The receding waters had left a long,
narrow line of beach, and shells similar to those found
at Krasnovodsk on the shore of the Caspian, and, as
we passed over them, I hoped that now we might be
about half-way on our journey, but to our great disappointment
we were told that it was not so. We
could soon see, however, that we had attained to a
very different tract of country— an excellent specimen
of a level steppe, where there was not a hill to be seen
all round, nor was the line of the horizon cut by so
much as a tree, hardly a bush, but the surface was
covered with a coarse, scrubby vegetation. The soil
was not saline, but stony, though the stones were not
rounded like those in the bed of the lake. Our men
had asked to stop at midday to bake their bread,
whereupon I gave them' some of mine, and insisted
upon their going on. Thus we continued marching
till 9 in the evening, hoping to reach the well at Uzun
Kuyu ; but, failing to do so, we stopped till an hour
past midnight to rest, for which I Was quite prepared,
having spent 8 hours in the saddle that day.
Before daybreak the men judged us to be near Uzun
Kuyu, but said they could not find the well in the dark ;
and at sunrise this was seen to be perfectly reasonable,
for there was no erection to mark the spot, and we
might have easily walked by, or, for that matter, into
it. This was one of the deep wells of which we had
been forewarned. I reckoned it 180 feet, but Markozoff
133 feet, to the water. Accordingly, Nazar did not
straddle over the top, as in other cases ; but, finding a
stake placed athwart the well, he let down his nosebags,
and then fastened the rope to a camel to draw
them up. The water, containing sulphuretted hydrogen,
had a disagreeable smell and taste, with a specific
gravity indicating on my hygrometer 102 degrees.
With this deterioration of water there came another
chancre in our lot. Thus far we had made our fires of
saxaul, the well-known fuel of Central Asia. A t Petro-
Alexandrovsk, General Grotenhielm gave me a piece
of this singular wood, about the thickness of the thumb,
but grown into a knot, the size of a double fist, and as
curiously intertwined as if it had been rope. East of
Sary Kamish we passed through little forests of it, the
trees being 12 or 14 feet high/and it was curious to
find that, though so hard as to defy the cutting of a
switch with a pocket-knife, yet one could break off