Across the gleaming burning sands, while the sun smote them pitilessly with his burning arrows, rode our brave traveller and his companions. Their lips cracked with thirst, and their eyes smarted with the noontide glare, and their weary horses stumbled in the loose shifting soil; but rest they durst not until they reached the well of Kyzil-Kak. How glad they were to throw themselves down beside it, while some kindly Kirghiz, who had already refreshed their camels and horses, drew for them the welcome water! MacGahan made a short halt here, feeding his horses, and sharing with his attendants a light meal of biscuits and fresh milk, supplied by the Kirghiz, and then—the saddle again! Meeting with a caravan, he learned from its Bashi, or leader, that the Russian army was at Tamdy—that is, instead of being, as he had hoped, within a day’s march, it must be upwards of two hundred miles distant; and as it was just on the point of starting for Aristan-Bel-Kudluk, which was still further south, it was impossible to say when he might overtake it. His disappointment was great; but his cry was still “Onwards!” By nine o’clock next morning the indefatigable traveller reached the foot of the grey, bare, treeless heights of the Bukan-Tau. Though but a thousand feet in elevation, they presented, with their glancing peaks, their conical summits, their deep valleys, and awful precipices, all the characteristics of an Alpine range of mountains. Resting there for some hours, he took up, on the morrow, a line of march around their northern slope, and gradually descended into the plain. From some Kirghiz he ascertained that the Grand-Duke Nicholas had joined General Kauffmann two days before, and that the united Russian army had then marched for Karak-Aty. The problem of overtaking it seemed more incapable than ever of a satisfactory solution. But, on studying his map, he found that from the point which he had reached it was no further to Karak-Aty than to Tamdy, and he instantly resolved to follow up a caravan route to the south, which promised to lead to the former.