sandy desert. We had a lovely full moon
over us, which added to the pleasure of travelling, and we rode on to
Bayas (five farsakhs), some seventeen or eighteen miles, where we arrived
at five in the morning. The altitude of this place was exactly the same
as that of Anar, 4,800 feet.

Bayas is a tiny village with a few mulberry trees and a small stream of
water. It has a fair caravanserai. We rested the horses for a couple of
hours, while I had breakfast, and by 7.30 a.m. we were again in our
saddles.

To the south-west and north-east by east we again perceived the familiar
high sand deposits, all along the base of the mountain ranges, and they
reached up to two-thirds of the height of the mountains, forming a
smooth, inclined plane rising very gently from the flat desert on which
we were travelling. To the north-east by east the sand-banks rose nearly
to the summit of the hill range.

Sadek and the chappar boy pointed out to me a village to the north-east
of the track, and informed me that all its inhabitants were robbers and
murderers. In fact upon the road, we came across a poor boy crying, and
bruised all over. We asked him what was the matter. He pointed to three
men in the distance who were running away, and said they had beaten him
and stolen his money, two krans, and two pomegranates. Sure enough, when
we galloped to the men and stopped them they did not wait to be accused
but handed me at once both fruit and money to be returned to their
rightful owner.

These folks had very brutal faces, framed in flowing locks of shaggy
hair. They were garbed in long thick coats of white felt, made entirely
of one piece, and quite stiff, with sleeves sticking out at the sides,
into which the arms were never to be inserted. There were two red and
blue small circular ornamentations at the bottom of the coat in front,
and one in the centre of the back, as on Japanese kimonos.

We began to see more habitations now, and about one mile north-east of
the track we perceived the villages of Esmalawat, Aliabad, and
Sher-i-fabad,--the latter quite a large place. We still went on over sand
and white salt deposits.

Poor Sadek was so tired and sleepy that he fell off his horse a couple of
times. The soil got very stony on getting near Kushkuhyeh (altitude 4,900
feet), where we entered the Chappar khana exactly at noon.

The contractor of the postal service lived at this village, and he was
extremely civil. As many as eight horses