ge;" and it derives its name from the salt
flats that are visible to the south of the road, and the general saline
character of the country round about. Salt enters very largely into the
composition of the mountains that present a solid and fantastically
streaked front a few miles to the north; and the streams flowing from
these mountains are simply streams of brine, whose mission would seem to
be conveying the saline matter from the hills, and distributing it over
the flats and swampy areas of the desert. These flats are visible from
the road, white, level, and impressive; like the Great American Desert,
Utah, as seen from the Matlin section house, and described in a previous
chapter (Vol. I.), it looks as though it might be a sheet of water,
solidified and dead.

At the end of the twenty miles one comes to a small and unpretentious
village and an equally small and unpretentious wayside tchai-khan, both
owing their existence to a stream of fresh water as small and
unpretentious as themselves. Beyond this cheerless oasis stretches again
the still more cheerless desert, the rivulets of undrinkable salt water,
the glaring white salt-flats to the south, and the salt-encrusted
mountains to the north. The shameless old party presiding at the
tchai-khan evidently realizes the advantages of his position, where many
travellers from either direction, reaching the place in a thirsty
condition, have no choice but between his decoction and cold water.
Instead of the excellent tea every Persian knows very well how to make,
he serves out a preparation that is made, I should say, chiefly from
camelthorn buds plucked within a mile of his shanty; he furthermore
illustrates in his own methods the baneful effects of being without the
stimulus of a rival, by serving it up in unwashed glasses, and without
noticing whether it is hot or cold.

Much loose gravel prevails between this memorable point and Lasgird, and
while trundling laboriously through it I am overtaken by a rain-storm,
accompanied by violent wind, that at first encompasses me about in the
most peculiar manner. The storm comes howling from the northwest and
advances in two sections, accompanied by thunder and lightning; the two
advancing columns seem to be dense masses of gray cloud rolling over the
surface of the plain, and between them is a clear space of perhaps half a
mile in width. The rain-dispensing columns pass me by on either side with
muttering rolls of thunder and m