e letters are so big that they can be
seen from Kerman, about three miles off. This is a pilgrimage well worth
making, for they say every wish of those who climb up to the inscription
will come true. Two qualities are required--a very steady head and the
agility of a monkey. The angle of the rock is very steep,--almost
vertical, as can be seen on the left side of the photograph, which I took
from the site of the inscription looking down upon the ruined city and
the whole Kerman plain. The only way by which,--on all fours,--one can
climb up is so worn, greasy and slippery, owing to the many pilgrims who
have glided up and down, that it is most difficult to get a grip on the
rock.

Yet the going-up is much easier than the coming down. The full-page
illustration shows the man who accompanied me just about to reach the
inscription,--I took the photograph as I clung to the rock just below
him, as can be seen from the distortion of his lower limbs caused by my
being unable to select a suitable position from which to take the
photograph. We were then clinging to the rock with a drop below us in a
straight line of several hundred feet.

We reached the inscription safely enough, and sat on the edge of the
precipice--the only place where we could sit--with our legs dangling over
it. Screened as we were in deep shadow, we obtained a magnificent
bird's-eye view of the Kerman plain, brilliantly lighted by the morning
sun, and of the forts to our left (south-west) and the many ruins down
below between ourselves and Kerman city. A bed of a stream, now dry,
wound its way from these mountains to almost the centre of the plain,
where it lost itself in the sand beyond a cluster of ruined buildings.
Undoubtedly at some previous time this torrent carried a good volume of
water to the village, and this accounts for the deserted settlement being
found there.

The letters of the inscription were ten feet high, painted white.

[Illustration: A Steep Rock Climb, Kerman.

Photograph of Guide taken by the Author on reaching the Inscription
several hundred feet above the plain.]

The man who had climbed up with me related an amusing incident of the
occasion when H. E. the Governor of the city was persuaded to climb to
inspect the inscription. Hauled up with the assistance of ropes and
servants, he became so nervous when he reached the inscription and looked
down upon the precipice below that he offered a huge reward if they took
him down aga