village--a quaint old place
perched high on the mountain side and with eight picturesque towers. Most
of these towers were round, but a large quadrangular one stood apart on a
separate hill.

There were innumerable holes in the rock, which were at one time
habitations, but are used now as stables mostly for donkeys, of which
there were a great number in the place. The rock on which the village
stood is very rugged and difficult of access, as can be seen by the
photograph which I took, and the architecture of the buildings had a
character peculiar to itself and differed very considerably from any
other houses we had met in Persia. They were flat-roofed, with very high
walls, and four circular apertures to answer the purpose of windows about
half-way up the wall. The roof was plastered and made a kind of verandah,
where the natives spread fruit and vegetables to dry and the women had
their small weaving looms. On one side of the rock, where the greater
number of habitations were to be found, they actually appeared one on the
top of the other, the front door of one being on the level with the roof
of the underlying one.

[Illustration: Author's Caravan Descending into River Bed near Darband.]

[Illustration: Rock Habitations, Naiband.]

The path to the village was very steep, tortuous and narrow. The village
extended from south-west to north-east on the top of the mountain, and
the separate quadrangular tower occupied a prominent position to its
eastern extremity. There were palm trees and fields both to the south and
east at the foot of the rocky mountain on which the village stood, and to
the W.N.W. (300 deg. bearings magnetic) of it towered the majestic Naiband
Mountain mass, very high, one of the great landmarks of the Dasht-i-Lut,
the Salt Desert.

Directly above the village of Naiband was a peak from which, although of
no great altitude--4,500 ft.--one got a beautiful bird's-eye view both of
the village and the surrounding country. An immense stretch of desert
spread below us, uninterrupted from north-east to south except by a small
cluster of hillocks directly under us, and by the continuation towards
the south-west of the Naiband mountainous mass; a high mountain lay to
(170 deg. bearings magnetic) S.S.E. The highest peak of the Naiband was to
the north of the village, and the mountainous region extended also in a
direction further north beyond the mountain that gives its name to the
whole mass. S.S.E. (150 d