of demarcation between utter
barrenness and where a new order of things begins.

Our way leads up fearful rocky paths, where the horses have to be led,
and at times assisted; up, up, until our elevation is nearly ten thousand
feet, and we are among a chaotic wilderness of precipitous rocks and
scrub pines. A false step in some places, and our horses would roll down
among the craggy rocks for hundreds of feet. It is a toilsome march, but
we cross the Tash Pass, camp for the night in a little inter-mountain
valley, beside a stream at the foot of a pine-covered mountain. The
change from the interior plains is already novel and refreshing. Grass
abounds abundance, and the prospect is the greenest I have seen for nine
months. We camp out in the open, and are put to some discomfort by
passing showers in the night.

A march of a dozen miles from this valley over a tortuous mountain trail
brings us into a country the existence of which one could never, by any
stretch of the imagination, dream of in connection with Persia, as one
sees it in its desert-like character south of the mountains. The
transformation is from one extreme of vegetable nature to the other. We
camp for lunch on velvety greensward beneath a grove of oak and cherry
trees. Cuckoos are heard calling round about, singing birds make melody,
and among them we both recognize the cheery clickety-click of my
raisin-loving Herati friends, the bul-buls. Flowers, too, are here at our
feet in abundance, forget-me-nots and other familiar varieties.

The view from our position is remarkably fine, reminding me forcibly of
the Balkans south of Nisch, and of the Californian slopes of the Sierra
Nevadas, where they overlook the Sacramento Valley. The Asterabad Plain
is spread out below us like a vast map.

We can trace the windings and twistings of the various streams, the
tracts of unreclaimed forest, and the cultivated fields. Asterabad and
numerous villages dot the plain, and by taking R------'s
binoculars we can make out, through the vaporous atmosphere, the
shimmering surface of the Caspian Sea. It is one of the most remarkable
views I ever saw, and the novelty and grandeur of it appeals the more
forcibly to one's imagination, no doubt, because of its striking contrast
to what the eyes have from long usage become accustomed to. From dreary,
barren dasht, and stony wastes, to densely wooded mountains,
jungle-covered plains, tall, luxurious tiger-grass, and beyond all thi