uined house
with four rooms, each four yards square, and each room with two doors,
and all the rooms communicating. It was badly damaged. Its shape was most
unusual.

We then proceeded to the Ziarat, a pilgrimage place famous all over
Persia and south-western Afghanistan. I was fortunate enough to take a
good photograph of its exterior (see opposite), which will represent its
appearance to the reader better than a description. A high rectangular
building plastered all over with mud, a front arch or alcove giving
access to a small door, and two domed low stone buildings, one on either
side, and another ruined building with a wall around it behind the
Ziarat. A few yards to the left of the entrance as one looked at it was a
coarse upright stone pillar.

The inside of the Ziarat was more interesting than the outside. It was a
very large whitewashed single room, with high vaulted ceiling, and in the
centre rose from the floor to a height of three feet a gigantic tomb, six
yards in length, with a gabled top. It measured one yard and a half
across at the head, and one yard at its foot, and had two stone pillars
some five feet high standing one at each extremity. To these two end
pillars was tied a rope, from which hung numberless rags, strips of cloth
and hair. Behind the head of the tomb along the wall stretched a platform
four and a half feet wide, on which rested two brass candlesticks of
primitive shape, a much-used kalyan, and a great number of rags of all
sizes, ages, and degrees of dirt.

The scrolls and inscriptions on the wall were very quaint, primitive
representations of animals in couples, male and female, being the most
indulged in by the pilgrims. Goats and dogs seemed favourite subjects for
portrayal.

[Illustration: Male and Female Goats. Dog.]

A lock of human hair and another of goat's hair hung on the wall to the
right of the entrance, and on two sticks laid across, another mass of
rags, white, blue, yellow and red. Hundreds more were strewn upon the
ground, and the cross bars of the four windows of the Ziarat were also
choke-full of these cloth offerings. Among other curious things
noticeable on the altar platform were a number of stones scooped into
water-vessels.

This Ziarat goes by the name of Gandun Piran, and is said to be some
centuries old. In the spring equinox pilgrimages are made to this Ziarat
from the neighbouring city and villages, when offerings of wheat are
contributed that the dono