ry hereabouts is a level plain, extending eastward to the Furrah
Rood; within the first few miles adjacent to the Harood are seen the
crenellated walls of several villages and the crumbling ruins of as many
more. Clumps of palm-trees and fields of alfalfa and green young wheat
environ the villages, and help to render the dull gray ruins picturesque.
The atmosphere seems phenomenally transparent, and the trees and ruins
and crenellated walls, rising above the level plain, are outlined clear
and distinct against the sky.

In the distance, at all points of the compass, rocky mountains rise sheer
from the dead level of the plain, looking singularly like giant cliffs
rising abruptly from the bed of some inland sea. One of these may be
thirty miles away, yet the wondrous clearness of the air renders apparent
distances so deceptive that it looks not more than one-third the
distance. It is a strikingly interesting country, and its inhabitants are
a no less strikingly interesting people.

A farsakh from our Harood-side camping-place, we halt to obtain
refreshments at a few rude tents pitched beneath the walls of a little
village. The owners of the tents are busy milking their flocks of goats.
It is an animated scene. No amount of handling, nor years of human
association, seems capable of curbing the refractory and restless spirit
of a goat. The matronly dams that are being subjected to the milking
process this morning have, no doubt, been milked regularly for years; yet
they have to be caught and held firmly by the horns by one person, while
another robs them of what they seem reluctant enough to give up.

The sun grows uncomfortably warm, and myriads of flies buzz hungrily
about our morning repast. Before we resume our journey a little damsel,
in flaming red skirt and big silver nose-ring, enters the garden and
plucks several roses, which she brings to me on a pewter salver. These
people are Eliautes, and the women are less fearful of showing themselves
than at the village where we passed the night. Several of them apply to
me for medical assistance. The chief trouble is chronic ophthalmia;
nearly all the children are afflicted with this disease, and at the eyes
of each poor helpless babe are a mass of hungry flies. The wonder is, not
that ophthalmia runs amuck among these people, but rather, that any of
the children escape total blindness.

Several villages are passed through en route to Ghalakua; the people turn
out en mas