coloured hills that the track began a gradual descent.
The highest point on the track was 3,670 feet.

We passed a strange mount shaped like a mushroom, and the same formation
could be noticed on a smaller scale in many other smaller hills, the
lower portion of which had been corroded by wind or water or both, until
the petrified centre of the hill remained like a stem supporting a
rounded cap of semi-petrified earth above it.

From the west there descended another water channel, quite dry. We next
found ourselves in a large basin one mile across and with an outlet to
the north-east, at which spot a square castle-shaped mountain stared us
in the face. A similar fortress, also of natural formation, was to the
south-south-west, and between these two the Robat track was traced.
Another outlet existed to the south-east. To the west, north, east and
south-east there were a great many sand-hills, and to the
south-south-west high rugged mountains.

A strong south-westerly gale was blowing and the sky was black and leaden
with heavy clouds. We were caught in several heavy showers as we
proceeded along a broad flat valley amid high and much broken-up black
mountains (north-west) the innumerable sharp pointed peaks of which
resembled the teeth of a saw. At their foot between them and our track
stretched a long screen of sand accumulations--in this case facing
north-west instead of west, the alteration in the direction being
undoubtedly due to the effect of the mountains on the direction of the
wind.

To the east there were rocks of a bright cadmium yellow colour, some 45
feet high, with deposits of sand and gravel on them as thick again (45
feet). The mountains behind these rocks showed a similar formation, the
yellow rock, however, rising to 120 feet with rock above it of a
blackish-violet colour, getting greenish towards the top where more
exposed to the wind.

The valley along which we were travelling averaged about 200 yards wide,
from the sand hills on one side to those on the other, and was at an
incline, the eastern portion being much lower than the western. The
yellow rocks at the side bore marks of having been subjected to the
corrosive action of water, which must occasionally fill this gully to a
great height during torrential rains.

We came to a most interesting point--the Malek Siah Ziarat, which in
theory marks the point where the three coveted countries, _i.e._, Persia,
Afghanistan and Beluchistan, meet. The