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78 ADVENTURES IN TIBET.
for help from higher up the river. Kasim and Kader
had dropped behind again after their recent narrow escape.
General consternation ! What had happened now ? I
instantly gave orders to push to shore, and sent all the
men back through the thickets and underwoods. It
appeared that the two men with the little ferry-boat
and the canvas skiff had got caught in an eddy, and just
in the very worst part of it had run upon the stump of a
poplar that was grounded in the bottom of the river and
reached barely above the surface. It was the skiff which
received the full force of the impact, and its canvas was
rent as with a knife in the fore part. Kader, however,
succeeded in getting to land with the " wreck." The
provision-boat, on the other hand, was not injured, but
she heeled over to such an extent that everything she
had on board was pitched out. Some of the things, such
as lanterns, axes and spades, saucepans, and copper utensils,
sank to the bottom, while others went dancing down the
river, until all the eddies were full of bobbing buckets,
baskets and boxes, fiUed with flour, loaves of bread, and
so forth. These, however, were mostly picked up again
by the canoes. As for the skipper, Kasim, he clung like
a wild-cat to the tree-stump, and yelled blue murder in
the middle of the whirlpool. He was at length taken off
by a canoe. The rest of the afternoon was spent in fishing
our belongings out of the river and drying them.
Next day our escorting flotilla was still further aug-
mented, and we now had a company of ten vessels, and
made quite a stately procession as we wound down the
sinuous Tarim. The scene which unfolded itself before us
at Tokuz-kum, or the Nine Dunes, was grand and imposing.
Sand-dunes, nearly 200 feet high, overhung the right
bank of the Tarim, and the yellow, impassive masses of
powdery sand contrasted most sharply with the lively
movements of the transparent water at their base. Simple
I
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