Our caravan was very depressed as it moved off the next morning at 4.30, marching for five miles over a most barren, sandy, and desolate country, when there was some improvement, and we were able to call a halt, again managing to get brackish water by digging. Poor Sulloo was brought into camp later on, and seemed to be doing well, for the bleeding ceased when he was placed on the ground and rested from the motion of the pony. He would lie huddled up in a heap on the pony's back, and if the pony happened to take an uneven pace or make a sudden jolt over an unlevel piece of ground, the jar to the man must have been almost unbearable. The second march was accomplished, too, without any casualty to man or beast.
The following day we had two stragglers, and Sulloo came in late, for even the two miles an hour was too fast for him. The land we marched over was remarkable for its various coloured stones; there were different shades of blue, red, green, yellow, black, and white, all perhaps indicating the presence of a multitude of minerals. The fine range of mountains to the north was still kept in sight, and we conjectured they must be a part of the Kuen Lun. Towards evening we came to a sandy nullah at the foot of an easy pass, and as water was good and plentiful a foot below the surface, and the animals had had none that day, we halted and made our drinking trough with the waterproof sheet. The wind blew hard and bitterly cold that evening from the north, and as we had no meat we tried one of Lazenby's pea-soup squares. These were excellent, and quite equal to a meal; would that we had brought more of them. After the strong night wind, we had a perfectly still cloudless morning as we began the ascent of the pass, whose summit we reached almost simultaneously with the rising sun.
We were sorely in need of meat, and although there was good grass round and about, yet there was no water visible above the surface, and this was how we accounted for the remarkable absence of any game. During the latter part of the day things improved, for an antelope was shot, but as none of the men were at hand to hallal the beast the entire meat fell to our share, so we made the most of our opportunity by carrying enough to last us for five or six days. And if we were lucky enough during that time to shoot another antelope, we promised the men they should have the whole of it, provided one of them came up quick enough to hallal it.