spare the reader an enumeration of the details and trouble entailed by these preliminaries of an exploring party. Let me, however, say that the thorough organisation of a caravan for a journey which is to end Heaven knows when or where, is the most difficult part of an explorer's work. In the Asiatic countries we were about to traverse, vehicles are not used, and the rivers are not navigable, being obstacles instead of means of communication as they are elsewhere. It is imperative, therefore, neither to forget anything nor to take a single superfluous article. So one tries to think of everything, and to foresee all contingencies; but, after having eliminated as much as possible, it is astonishing to find how heavy the load is.
Meanwhile, we had to recruit our men at Djarkent on the frontier of Siberia. This was most difficult, for here we could only secure men very much below the mark, and not at all built for a long journey. Rachmed inspected them first, and, in presenting them to me, his unvarying observation was, "They are of no use for the road." I could see that he was right. There was not one of them who had respectable antecedents; they were a pack of lazy and penniless fellows who were anxious only to get across the frontier in our wake. Among them there is not one of those adventurers, vigorous and ready for anything, who have already looked death in the face, and would go through fire after the leader whom chance had given them, provided that leader had succeeded in attaching them to himself by a mixture of good and of bad usage. How much we regretted not having our base of operations in Russian Turkestan — at Samarkand, for instance, where there is no lack of good men. It is true we had three Russians who would suit us very well, but they made it a condition, when they took service with us, that they should not go beyond the Lob Nor.
September 6.—We left Djarkent on the 2nd, and, marching by short stages, reached Kuldja to-day, and were most hospitably
