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drawn up in no sort of order at all; but as soon as they saw
us advance, they let fly their arrows, which missed us, very
happily. Not that they mistook their aim, but their distance ;
for their arrows all fell a little short of us, but with so true an
aim, that had we been about twenty yards nearer we must have
had several men wounded, if not killed.

Immediately we halted, and though it was at a great distance,
we fired, and sent them leaden bullets for wooden arrows,
following our shot full gallop, to fall in among them sword in
hand—for so our bold Scot that led us directed. He was,
indeed, but a merchant, but he behaved with such vigour and
bravery on this occasion, and yet with such cool courage too,
that I never saw any man in action fitter for command. As
soon as we came up to them we fired our pistols in their faces
and then drew; but they fled in the greatest confusion imagin-
able. The only stand any of them made was on our right,
where three of them stood, and, by signs, called the rest to
come back to them, having a kind of scimitar in their hands,
and their bows hanging to their backs. Our brave commander,
without asking anybody to follow him, gallops up close to them,
and with his fusee knocks one of them off his horse, killed the
second with his pistol, and the third ran away. Thus ended
our fight; but we had this misfortune attending it, that all our
mutton we had in chase got away. We had not a man killed
or hurt; as for the Tartars, there were about five of them killed
—how many were wounded we knew not; but this we knew,
that the other party were so frightened with the noise of our
guns that they fled, and never made any attempt upon us.

We were all this while in the Chinese dominions, and there-
fore the Tartars were not so bold as afterwards; but in about
five days we entered a vast wild desert, which held us three
days’ and nights’ march: and we were obliged to carry our
water with us in great leathern bottles, and to encamp all night,
just as I have heard they do in the desert of Arabia. I asked
our guides whose dominion this was in, and they told me this
was a kind of border that might be called no man’s land, being
a part of Great Karakathy, or Grand Tartary: that, however, it
was all reckoned as belonging to China, but that there was no
care taken here to preserve it from the inroads of thieves, and
therefore it was reckoned the worst desert in the whole march,
though we were to go over some much larger.

In passing this frightful wilderness we saw, two or three
times, little parties of the Tartars, but they seemed to be upon
their own affairs, and to have no design upon us; and so, like