at Marco Polo's description is applicable to the country.
He speaks of six days' journey through beautiful valleys and pretty
hillsides. To the east of Sebsevar you come out into desert country, which,
however passes into fertile country with many villages.[2] Then there comes
a boundless dreary steppe to the south. At the village Seng-i-kal-i-deh you
enter an undulating country with immense flocks of sheep. 'The first
stretch of the road between Shurab and Nishapur led us through perfect
desert..; but the landscape soon changed its aspect; the desert passed by
degrees into cultivated lands, and we rode past several villages surrounded
by fields and gardens.... We here entered the most fertile and densely
peopled region in Khorasan, in the midst of which the town of Nishapur is
situated.' Of the tract to the east of Nishapur I say: 'Here are found
innumerable villages. The plain and slopes are dotted with them. This
district is extraordinarily densely inhabited and well cultivated.' But
then all this magnificence comes to an end, and of the last day's journey
between Kademgah and Meshed I write: 'The country rose and we entered a
maze of low intricate hillocks.... The country was exceedingly dreary and
bare. Some flocks of sheep were seen, however, but what the fat and sleek
sheep lived on was a puzzle to me.... This dismal landscape was more and
more enlivened by travellers.... To the east stretched an undulating steppe
up to the frontier of Afghanistan.'

"The road between Sebsevar and Meshed is, in short, of such a character
that it can hardly fit in with Marco Polo's enthusiastic description of
the six days. And as these came just before Sapurgan, one cannot either
identify the desert regions named with the deserts about the middle course
of the Murgab which extend between Meshed and Shibirkhan. He must have
crossed desert first, and it may be identified with the nemek-sar or salt
desert east of Tun and Kain. The six days must have been passed in the
ranges Paropamisus, Firuz-kuh, and Bend-i-Turkestan. Marco Polo is not
usually wont to scare his readers by descriptions of mountainous regions,
but at this place he speaks of mountains and valleys and rich pastures. As
it was, of course, his intention to travel on into the heart of Asia, to
make a detour through Sebsevar was unnecessary and out of his way. If he
had travelled to Sebsevar, Nishapur, and Meshed, he would scarcely call
the province of Tun-o-Kain the extremi