Indeed we ought to have died a score of times, yet always were preserved, most mysteriously preserved.
Now we were in country where, so far as I could learn, no European had ever set a foot.

In a part of the vast land called Turkestan there is a great lake named Balhkash, of which we visited the shores.

Two hundred miles or so to the westward is a range of mighty mountains marked on the maps as Arkarty-Tau, on which we spent a year, and five hundred or so to the eastward are other mountains called Cherga, whither we journeyed at last, having explored the triple ranges of the Tau.
Here it was that at last our true adventures began.

On one of the spurs of these awful Cherga mountains--it is unmarked on any map--we well-nigh perished of starvation.

The winter was coming on and we could find no game.