a defile between high walls of rock. At the mouth of this passage through the hills was a grove of palmtrees, with a small village standing on the edge of it, from which the inhabitants flocked to gape at the strange spectacle of a white man riding through their midst. As we rode on over a level stretch of cultivated soil between ridges of rocky hills, more signs of habitation became apparent, and small collections of houses enclosed by high mud walls, little clumps of trees, quaint-looking windmills, and tiny patches of young green barley, all went to show that we were over the desolate and uninhabited stretches on the north-west border of Sistan, and were once more in a country possessed of a sprinkling at any rate of inhabited and cultivated oases. My horse became so bad here that I was forced to leave him behind, and handed him over to one of the Balooch sowars who carry the post-bag from Nasratabad to Birjand, whom I found living in a village hard by, telling him that he could keep him if he got better in the course of the next few days, but if not that he had better shoot him. For the rest of the way to Birjand I rode one of my sowars' ponies. I was entirely in my camelmen's hands as far as time and direction were concerned, and from here they went across country, leaving the main caravan-route which passes through Neh, and which I did not get on to again till within four marches of Birjand, and camping whenever they considered that they had marched far enough. My progress consequently through an intensely dull and uninteresting country was far from rapid, and I longed for a congenial companion to help to while away the time. On the 16th we marched over a level stretch, at first of good soil and then of stony ground, while all round LETTERS IN THE DESERT. 363 barren hills rose in isolated groups and ridges from the plain. Towards the end of the day's march on the 17th we got into more mountainous country, where here and there hills higher than the rest were lightly flaked with snow, affording some little relief to the dreary dust colour of the whole landscape. As I was leaving camp on the 18th two Balooch sowars rode up on their way with the mail-bag to Birjand, carrying also some letters for me forwarded from Nasratabad—an instance of how letters reach one, even in the most unexpected places. We rode along together for some way over the usual monotonous stretches of gravel, earth, and rock till we came upon the tents pitched in the very middle of a cheerless plain. Though not so cold as it had been of late, heavy clouds hung threateningly all round, and the outlook was indescribably dull and dreary. On the 19th we made better progress, getting over about thirty miles during the day through country much the same as usual, though the plain was covered for the greater part of the way with large leafless bushes, grey, dried up, and dead-looking. Towards the end of the march we skirted along the edge of a large swamp surrounded by great patches of glistening salt, to the east of which rose a bare mountain-range of burnt sienna, smudged here and there with odd patches of brick red. Almost immediately after leaving camp on the 20th I came across a herd of eight or ten gazelle, among which the glass showed several buck with fine horns; but my rifle unfortunately had gone on overnight, and I had to be content with watching them. These gazelle are not the chinkara found scattered over the plains of India, but the variety known as Gazella subgutturosa; for though I never shot one myself, I saw a number of specimens in possession of natives at different times, and the form of the horns stamped them as belonging to the latter variety. Near the head of the plain along which we were travelling we came upon some acres of cultivated land, and a village of perhaps 150 small domed houses, massed closely together, the inmates of which crowded on to their roofs to stare at us go by. Our road took us along the karez or kanat which brought water from the mountains at the head of the plain. Parallel to and within a few yards of the one in working order were the shafts of an old and disused one, the people preferring, it would seem, to construct an entirely new kanat to repairing an existing one which happens to have got blocked, though where the economy in making an entirely new aqueduct in place of repairing an old one comes in is not altogether obvious.1 We now crossed the hills at the head of the plain, passing a kafilah of forty camels en route for Sistan, which showed that we had once more joined the regular caravan-route, and entering an elevated valley which boasted of a certain amount of cultivation, camped at the second of two villages which we came to. The people were inquisitive and curious, and gathered in crowds round my tent till I got my ferash to explain that I was a very ordinary individual, and hardly worth watching. On the 21st we continued for some way along the valley, bordered on the west by a fine range of 1 The Persians would seem to have a penchant for doing things in the same sort of way as the Chinaman who set fire to his house in order that he might have roast pig for dinner, as witness the tale told to O'Donovan to the effect that the old town of Radcan had been removed from its former site owing to an epidemic caused by certain foul drains and cesspools in the neighbourhood. "One would have thought," he naïvely remarks, “it easier to remove the cesspools than the town and population, but they do things differently in Persia" (Merve Oasis'). |