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There was one novelty, a stove-pipe connected with a sort of cement stove, but perhaps this was merely for ornament, as my dinner was cooked in a pot placed upon a tripod over a fire of wood and argols. I was given the seat of honour, a sort of divan, and milk was placed on a small, low table before me. But I at once espied something more interesting than food.
As a result we were all soaked through, and after getting nearly bogged, all hands of us in a quagmire, I gave it up and we camped on the drenched ground, and there we stayed till the middle of the next day spending most of our time trying to get dry. The argols were too wet to burn, but we made a little blaze with the wood of my soda-water box.
The pilgrims were about to partake of the primitive fare of meal steeped in cold water a cheerless beverage to three men drenched to the skin when at the critical juncture up came two Tartars. 'Sirs Lamas, this day the heavens have fallen. You doubtless have been unable to make a fire. 'Alas! how should we make a fire? we have no argols.
As the travellers carried with them a large stock of provisions, and fresh meat could generally be obtained from the nomad shepherds, their table was well served; but owing to the absolute dearth of any other kind of fuel, they were compelled to kindle their fires with argols, or dried cow-dung.
'My spiritual fathers, observed the guide, 'I told you we should not die to-day of thirst, but I am not at all sure that we don't run some risk of dying of hunger. In point of fact, there seemed no possibility of making a fire. There was not a tree, not a shrub, not a root to be seen. As to argols, the rain had long since reduced that combustible of the desert to a liquid pulp.