We crept from the tent, and leaving it standing awhile, dragged our stiffened limbs a hundred yards or so to a spot where the defile took a turn, in order that we might thaw in the rays of the sun, which at that hour could not reach us where we had camped.
Leo was round it first, and I heard him utter an exclamation.

In a few seconds I reached his side, and lo! before us lay our Promised Land.
Far beneath us, ten thousand feet at least--for it must be remembered that we viewed it from the top of a mountain--it stretched away and away till its distances met the horizon.

In character it was quite flat, an alluvial plain that probably, in some primeval age, had been the bottom of one of the vast lakes of which a number exist in Central Asia, most of them now in process of desiccation.

One object only relieved this dreary flatness, a single, snow-clad, and gigantic mountain, of which even at that distance--for it was very far from us--we could clearly see the outline.

Indeed we could see more, for from its rounded crest rose a great plume of smoke, showing that it was an active volcano, and on the hither lip of the crater an enormous pillar of rock, whereof the top was formed to the shape of a loop.
Yes, there it stood before us, that symbol of our vision which we had sought these many years, and at the sight of it our hearts beat fast and our breath came quickly.