About ten miles from the Eimuek camp, the country develops into a wilderness of deep, loose sand and bowlders.  Across this sandy region stretches a range of dark volcanic hills; the bases of the hills terminate in billows of whitish-yellow sand; the higher waves of the sandy sea stretch well up the sides like giant ocean breakers driven by the gale up the side of the rocky cliffs.  It is a tough piece of country even for the sowars’ horses, and dragging a bicycle through the mingled sand and bowlders is abominable in the extreme.  The heat becomes oppressive as we penetrate deeper into the belt of sand-hills, and after five miles of desperate tugging I become tired and distressed.  The sowars lolling lazily in their saddles, well-nigh sleeping, while I am struggling and perspiring, form another chapter of experience entirely novel in the field of European travel in Asia.  Usually it is the natives who have to sweat and toil and administer to the comfort of the traveller.

Revolving these things over in my mind, and becoming really wearied, I suggest to the khan that he change places for a brief spell and give me a chance to rest.  The idea of himself trundling the asp-i-awhan appeals to the khan as decidedly novel, and he bites at the bait quite readily.  Mounting his vacated saddle, I join the mirza and the mudbake in watching him struggle along through the sand with it for some two hundred yards.  Along that brief course he topples over with it not less than half a dozen times.  The novel spectacle of the khan trundling the asp-i-awhan arouses his two comrades from the warmth-inspired semi-torpidity of their condition, and whenever the khan topples over, they favor him with jeers and laughter.  At the end of two hundred, yards the khan declares himself exhausted and orders the mudbake to dismount and try it; this, however, the mudbake bluntly refuses to do.  After a little persuasion the inirza is induced to try the experiment of a trundle; it is but an experiment, however, for, being less active than the khan, the first time he tumbles the bicycle over finds him sprawling on top of it, and, fearful lest he should snap some spokes, I take it in hand again myself.

Another couple of miles and the eastern edge of the sandy area I is reached, after which a compensational proportion of smooth gravel abounds.  Shortly after noon another small camp of nomads I is reached, some half-dozen inferior tents, pitched on the shelterless edge of an exposed gravelly slope.  The afternoon is oppressively hot, and the men are comfortably snoozing in all sorts of outlandish places among the scrubby camel-thorn.  Only the I women and children are visible as we approach the tents; but youngsters are despatched forthwith, and, lo! several tall white-robed figures seem to rise up literally out of the ground at different spots round about; they were burrowed away under the low, bushy shrubbery like rabbits.  The women and children among these nomads always seem industriously engaged, the former with domestic duties about the tents, and the latter tending the flocks; but the men put in most of their unprofitable lives loafing, sleeping, and gossiping.