The immigration of birds which began in August increased in September, as many as eighteen kinds having made their appearance in the early part of this month. But the birds of passage mostly keep to the valley of the Hoang-ho, and only visit the desert of Ala-shan in small numbers. Here they fare badly, for many of them perish from hunger or thirst in the wilderness, and I found numbers of dead thrushes, which dissection proved to have evidently died from starvation. My companion once picked up in a dry ravine near the axis of the lofty Ala-shan mountains, a mallard so exhausted as to allow itself to be caught in the hand.
The summer heats were now over, and we could march without great fatigue. The loose sands, ranged in small mounds like those in Ordos, surrounded us with a boundless yellow plain which was lost in the horizon. The road led through bushes of zak, frequently crossing the ridges of sand. The fate of the traveller who loses himself in these trackless wastes would indeed be terrible, especially in summer, when the desert becomes as hot as an oven.
Fifty miles before arriving at Din-yuan-ing the bare sands recede to the right of the road, which now continues through a plain of clay and sand for the most part, covered with rare clumps of the field wormwood, called by the Mongols sharaldja, and used by them for fuel. This plain extends as far as the Ala-shan mountains, which rise like a huge rampart, and may be seen 60 miles off; snow lay on
