due east. Then we saw
another bunch of pigeon towers.

Leaving behind the hills nearer to us to the north-west, west, and
south-west, and the more distant and most fantastically shaped range to
the south, my mules gradually descend into the plain. For an angle of 40 deg.
from east to S.S.E. no hills are visible to the naked eye, but there is a
long range of comparatively low hills encircling us from N.N.W. to S.S.E.
and N.E. of the observer, the highest points being at 80 deg. (almost
N.E.E.). To the north we have a long line of _kanats_.

Following the drunken row of telegraph poles we arrive at Gullahbad
(Gulnabad)--a village in ruins. From this point for some distance the
soil is covered with a deposit of salt, giving the appearance of a
snow-clad landscape, in sharp contrast with the terrific heat prevailing
at the time. This road is impassable during the rainy weather. As one
nears the hills to the N.E. tufts of grass of an anaemic green cover the
ground (altitude 5,250 feet).

Under a scorching sun we reached Saigsi (8 farsakhs from Isfahan) at six
o'clock in the afternoon, and put up in the large caravanserai with two
rooms up stairs and ten down below around the courtyard. The difference
in the behaviour of the natives upon roads on which Europeans do not
frequently travel could be detected at once here. One met with the
greatest civility and simplicity of manner and, above all, honesty, which
one seldom finds where European visitors are more common.

There are few countries where the facial types vary more than in Persia.
The individuals of nearly each town, each village, have peculiar
characteristics of their own. At Saigsi, for instance, only 32 miles from
Isfahan, we find an absolutely different type of head, with abnormally
large mouth and widely-expanded nostrils, the eyes wide apart, and the
brow overhanging. The latter may be caused by the constant brilliant
refraction of the white soil in the glare of the sun (altitude of Saigsi
5,100 feet).

About four miles east of Saigsi and north of the track we come across
five curious parallel lines of mud-heaps or dunes stretching from north
to south. Each of these heaps is precisely where there is a gap in the
mountain range to the north of it, and each has the appearance of having
been gradually deposited there by a current passing through these gaps
when the whole of this plain was the sea-bottom. These mud heaps are
flat-topped and vary from 20 to 40 fee