r may be at peace with the gods and expect
plentiful crops. These pilgrimages take very much the form of our "day's
outing on a Bank Holiday," and sports of various kinds are indulged in by
the horsemen. It is the custom of devout people when visiting these
Ziarats to place a stone on the tomb, a white one, if obtainable, and we
shall find this curious custom extending all over Beluchistan and, I
believe, into a great portion of Afghanistan.

Directly in front of the Ziarat was the priests' house, with massive,
broad stone walls and nine rooms. The ceilings, fallen through in most
rooms, were not semi-spherical as usual but semi-cylindrical, as could
still be seen very plainly in the better-preserved one of the central
room. This house had a separate building behind for stables and an outer
oven for baking bread. The dwelling was secluded by a wall.

The top of Kuh-i-Kwajah is even now a favourite spot for people to be
laid to their eternal rest, and near this Ziarat were to be found a great
many graves which were quite modern. These modern tombs, more elaborate
than the old ones, rose to about five feet above the ground, had a mud
and stone perforated balustrade above them all round, and three steps by
which the upper part could be reached. They seldom, however, had more
than three bodies in each tomb.

We found on the ground a very curious large hollowed stone like a big
mortar, which seemed very ancient. Then further were more old graves in
rows of five, six, eight, and more. When one peeped into the broken ones,
the temptation to take home some of the bleached skulls to add to the
collection of one's national museum, and to let scientists speculate on
their exact age, was great. But I have a horror of desecrating graves. I
took one out--a most beautifully preserved specimen--meaning to overcome
my scruples, but after going some distance with it wrapped up in my
handkerchief I was seized with remorse, and I had to go and lay it back
again in the same spot where it had for centuries lain undisturbed.

I examined several skulls that were in good condition, and the following
were their principal characteristics. They possessed abnormally broad
cheek-bones, and the forehead was very slanting backwards and was
extremely narrow across the temples and broad at its highest portion. The
back portion of the skull, in which the animal qualities of the brain are
said by phrenologists to reside, was also abnormally developed, w