ver with carpets.
Variegated cloth or carpet or red and green leather saddle-bags hung on
either side of the animals behind the saddles. The bridle and bit were
richly ornamented with shells and silver or iron knobs.

The few mud houses in the neighbourhood had flat roofs and were not
sufficiently typical nor inviting enough for a closer internal
inspection.

We are now on a tributary of the Shah-rud on the new road, instead of the
old caravan track, which we have left since Paichinar.

The country becomes more interesting and wild as we go on. In the
undoubtedly volcanic formation of the mountains one notices large patches
of sulphurous earth on the mountain-side, with dark red and black baked
soil above it. Over that, all along the range, curious column-like,
fluted rocks. Lower down the soil is saturated with sulphurous matter
which gives it a rich, dark blue tone with greenish tints in it and
bright yellow patches. The earth all round is of a warm burnt sienna
colour, intensified, when I saw it, by the reddish, soft rays of a dying
sun. It has all the appearance of having been subjected to abnormal heat.
The characteristic shape of the peaks of the range is conical, and a
great many deep-cut channels and holes are noticeable in the rocky sides
of these sugar-loaf mountains, as is frequently the case in mountains of
volcanic formation.

We rise higher and higher in zig-zag through rugged country, and we then
go across an intensely interesting large basin, which must at a previous
date have been the interior of an exploded and now collapsed volcano.
This place forcibly reminded me of a similar sight on a grander
scale,--the site of the ex-Bandaisan Mountain on the main island of
Nippon in Japan, after that enormous mountain was blown to atoms and
disappeared some few years ago. A huge basin was left, like the bottom
part of a gigantic cauldron, the edges of which bore ample testimony to
the terrific heat that must have been inside before the explosion took
place. In the Persian scene before us, of a much older date, the basin,
corroded as it evidently was by substances heated to a very high
temperature and by the action of forming gases, had been to a certain
extent obliterated by the softening actions of time and exposure to air.
The impression was not so violent and marked as the one received at
Bandaisan, which I visited only a few days after the explosion, but the
various characteristics were similar.

In th