eight o'clock in the
morning
The night had been cold , for we are still at an altitude of twelve hundred metres . Leaving Guma station , the line runs due east and west , following the thirty-seventh parallel , the same which traverses in Europe , Seville , Syracuse and Athens . We sighted only one stream of importance , the Kara-kash , on which appeared a few drifting rafts , and files of horses and asses at the fords between the pebbly banks . The railroad crosses it about a hundred kilometres from Khotan , where we arrived at eight o'clock in the morning . Two hours to stop , and as the town may give me a foretaste of the cities of China , I resolve to take a run through it . It seems to be a Turkoman town built by the Chinese , or perhaps a Chinese town built by Turkomans . Monuments and inhabitants betray their double origin .