We had a bad march on December 17. No shouts of encouragement were heard, but the caravan moved on slowly and apathetically. Within half an hour our feet were benumbed and lost all feeling. I wound the ends of my _bashlik_ like a visor several times round my face up to the eyes, but the breath turned it into a thick crust of ice which froze to my moustache and beard, which I had allowed to grow since leaving Gartok to suit my intended Mohammedan disguise. All the men put on their furs. Dust and soil flew about, and our faces had a singular appearance.
At a place where a Yarkand caravan was encamped, we turned to the right up a very narrow valley, in which the floor, covered with bright milky-white ice, looked like a marble pavement between the rocky walls. Fortunately the Yarkand men had strewn sand over the ice, but still it did not prevent several of our animals from falling, so that they had to be loaded again.
When we at length camped in Long the temperature was at zero even at three o'clock. A second large Yarkand caravan, on the homeward journey, was halting here. The leaders asked us to travel with them over the Karakorum, but I refused, with the excuse that we could make only short day's marches. Observation by any who might tell the Chinese in Yarkand that I had again passed over into Tibet was exactly what I must avoid above everything.
Here lay a poor man, both of whose feet had been frost-bitten on the Karakorum, so that the flesh and toes actually fell off. He crawled up to our camp and wept over his disastrous fate. He had been engaged with the Yarkand caravan we had met first, but as he had become incapable of work owing to his wounds, the barbarous merchant had dismissed him in the midst of the wilds and left him behind. In such a case it is hard to know what to do. We could not cure him, and to take him with us or give up a part of the caravan for him was out of the question. He said himself that he would crawl to Shyok, but how was he to get across the river? I let him warm himself at our fire, drink tea and eat, and on the 18th, when we went on after 56½° of frost in the night, I gave him _tsamba_ for several days, matches, and a sum of money which would enable him to hire a horse from a caravan travelling to Shyok.