hold. It is the old story which Ovid tells; and the tree which
Erisichthon felled was a _Dirakht-i-Fazl_:

"Vittae mediam, memoresque tabellae
Sertaque cingebant, voti argumenta potentis."
(_Metamorph._ VIII. 744.)

Though the coincidence with our text of Hamd Allah's Dry Tree is very
striking, I am not prepared to lay stress on it as an argument for the
geographical determination of Marco's _Arbre Sec_. His use of the title
more than once to characterise the whole frontier of Khorasan can hardly
have been a mere whim of his own: and possibly some explanation of that
circumstance will yet be elicited from the Persian historians or
geographers of the Mongol era.

Meanwhile it is in the vicinity of Bostam or Damghan that I should incline
to place this landmark. If no one _very_ cogent reason points to this, a
variety of minor ones do so; such as the direction of the traveller's
journey from Kerman through Kuh Banan; the apparent vicinity of a great
Ismailite fortress, as will be noticed in the next chapter; the connection
twice indicated (see _Prologue_, ch. xviii. note 6, and Bk. IV. ch. v.) of
the Arbre Sec with the headquarters of Ghazan Khan in watching the great
passes, of which the principal ones debouche at Bostam, at which place
also buildings erected by Ghazan still exist; and the statement that the
decisive battle between Alexander and Darius was placed there by local
tradition. For though no such battle took place in that region, we know
that Darius was murdered near Hecatompylos. Some place this city west of
Bostam, near Damghan; others east of it, about Jah Jerm; Ferrier has
strongly argued for the vicinity of Bostam itself. Firdusi indeed places
the final battle on the confines of Kerman, and the death of Darius within
that province. But this could not have been the tradition Polo met with.

I may add that the temperate climate of Bostam is noticed in words almost
identical with Polo's by both Fraser and Ferrier.

The Chinar abounds in Khorasan (as far as any tree can be said to _abound_
in Persia), and even in the Oases of Tun-o-Kain wherever there is water.
Travellers quoted by Ritter notice Chinars of great size and age at
Shahrud, near Bostam, at Meyomid, and at Mehr, west of Sabzawar, which
last are said to date from the time of Naoshirwan (7th century). There is
a town to the N.W. of Meshid called _Chinaran_, "The Planes." P. Della
Valle, we may note, calls Tehran "la citta dei platani.