I saw the lake in
Afghanistan, however, it was absolutely dry.

The Shela river had very large pools of deep water almost all along that
part of it which is in Sistan territory, but there was hardly any water
flowing at all, so that nowadays in dry weather it loses itself in the
sand long before reaching the depression in Afghan territory, where, by
the great salt deposits, it is evident that a lake may have formerly
existed, but not now.

After leaving the Shela we were travelling again on the sandy _lut_, and
not a blade of vegetation of any kind could be seen. We came to two
tracks, one going south-west, the other due south. We followed the
latter. As we got some miles further south a region of tamarisks began,
and they got bigger and bigger as we went along. Where some shelter
existed from the north winds, the shrubs had developed into quite big
trees, some measuring as much as 20 feet in height. For a desert, this
seemed to us quite a forest. Near the well of salt water, half way (12
miles) between the two postal stations, the tamarisks were quite thick.

Sixteen miles from Nawar, however, some great sand dunes, like waves of a
sea, extending from east to west, were again found, together with
undulations of sand and gravel, and here tamarisks again became scarce.
The track had been marked with cairns of stones at the sides. Where the
wind had full sway, the long sand banks, parallel to one another and very
regular in their formation, appeared exactly like the waves of a stormy
ocean.

The track went towards the south-west, where one has to get round the
point of Afghanistan, which, projects west as far as the Kuh-i-Malek-Siah
(Mountains). We were steering into what appeared at first a double row of
mountains in a mountain mass generally called the Malek-Siah. To the
west, however, on getting nearer we could count as many as four different
ranges and two more to the east of us. The last range, beyond all of the
four western ones, had in its S.S.W. some very high peaks which I should
roughly estimate at about eight to ten thousand feet above the plain. Due
west there were also some high points rising approximately from six to
seven thousand feet, and in front of these and nearest to the observer, a
low hill range. A high even-topped range, like a whale's back, and not
above 3,000 feet above the plain, had a conical hill on the highest part
of its summit. The loftiest mountains were observed from south to
south-we