d up with sand. There is a well of
immense depth, bored in the rock, the fort standing some five hundred
feet above the plain; but although this is said by some writers to have
been a way of escape from this fortress to as distant a place as Khabis,
some forty-five miles as the crow flies to the east of Kerman, I never
heard this theory expounded in Kerman itself, but in any case, it is
rather strange that the well should have been made so small in diameter
as hardly to allow the passage of a man, its shaft being bored absolutely
perpendicular for hundreds and hundreds of feet and its sides perfectly
smooth, so that an attempt to go down it would be not a way of escape
from death, but positive suicide. The well was undoubtedly made to supply
the fort with water whenever it became impracticable to use the larger
wells and tanks constructed at the foot of the hills within the
fortification walls.

CHAPTER XLIV

The deserted city of Farmidan--More speculation--The Afghan
invasion--Kerman surrenders to Agha Muhammed Khan--A cruel
oppressor--Luft-Ali-Khan to the rescue--The Zoroastrians--Mahala
Giabr--Second Afghan invasion--Luft-Ali-Khan's escape--Seventy
thousand human eyes--Women in slavery--Passes--An outpost--Fire
temples--Gigantic inscriptions--A stiff rock climb--A pilgrimage
for sterile women--A Russian picnic--A Persian
dinner--Fatabad--The trials of abundance--A Persian
menu--Rustamabad--Lovely fruit garden.

The very large deserted city of Farmidan lies directly south of the
mountainous crescent on which are found the fortifications described in
the previous chapter. The houses of the city do not appear very ancient,
their walls being in excellent preservation, but not so the domed roofs
which have nearly all fallen in. The houses are entirely constructed of
sun-dried mud bricks, now quite soldered together by age and reduced into
a compact mass. A few of the more important dwellings have two storeys,
and all the buildings evidently had formerly domed roofs. In order that
the conformation of each house may be better understood, a plan of one
typical building is given. On a larger or smaller scale they all
resembled one another very closely, and were not unlike the Persian
houses of to-day.

There was a broad main road at the foot of the mountains along the
southern side of which the city had been built, with narrow and tortuous
streets leading out of the pr