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DOWN THE LONELY TARIM. 65
watching us with his mouth open in amazement ;
but as
soon as he saw that he was observed he took to his heels in
a great hurry. We traversed the Kara-toghrak, or the
Black Forest, at great speed. The river here was shallow,
and the water frothed and foamed over the thresholds or
ledges at the bottom. At one point we were driving straight
down upon a projecting headland, and a catastrophe seemed
inevitable, but just at the right moment the stream itself
came to our assistance, and we only grazed the overhanging
thickets, our ferry-boat carrying along with her a few
tamarisk branches. It was an exceedingly near thing.
Yet what a pleasure it was to see the banks hasten so
trippingly past.
On the other side of the Black Forest the river stretched
away, away to the north-north-east. The belts of yellow
reeds thinned out to a line point on each side of the stream,
and in the far distance the river itself seemed to melt with
the sky, or rather to diffuse itself through the endless
spaces of the world. Just as we, suspecting no danger,
were gliding quietly past a huge overhanging, undermined
section of the terraced bank, the entire mass broke off and
plunged into the river, drenching the starboard side of our
vessel, and the men who were working there, and at the
same time setting up such a wash that for a time we rolled
like a derelict in the trough of the sea.
Some distance farther on we saw a solitary woman
standing amongst the reeds. She showed no signs of alarm,
and shouted that she wished to make us a present of half-a-
score eggs. We manoeuvred the ferry-boat so as to bring
her stern close in under the reed thicket where the woman
stood ; and then Islam received the packet of eggs and
flung a few coppers to the unknown lady. Who was she ?
She was like the wind ; she came we knew not whence and
went we knew not whither.
It was, as I have said, autumn, and was beginning to
5
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