These pillars we observed with satisfaction, for they told us that we were still upon a highway which led to the Promised Land.
Yet, as we could not help noting, it was one which seemed to have gone out of use, since with the exception of a few wild-sheep tracks and the spoor of some bears and mountain foxes, not a single sign of beast or man could we discover.

This, however, was to be explained, we reflected, by the fact that doubtless the road was only used in the summer season.
Or perhaps the inhabitants of the country were now stay-at-home people who never travelled it at all.
Those slopes were longer than we thought; indeed, when darkness closed in we had not reached the foot of them.

So we were obliged to spend another night in the snow, pitching our tent in the shelter of an over-hanging rock.

As we had descended many thousand feet, the temperature proved, fortunately, a little milder; indeed, I do not think that there were more than eighteen or twenty degrees of frost that night.

Also here and there the heat of the sun had melted the snow in secluded places, so that we were able to find water to drink, while the yak could fill its poor old stomach with dead-looking mountain mosses, which it seemed to think better than nothing.
Again, the still dawn came, throwing its red garment over the lonesome, endless mountains, and we dragged ourselves to our numbed feet, ate some of our remaining food, and started onwards.