shk" cheese--Arrival in Birjand.

We left camp at 8 p.m. on the night of November 20th-21st, and by
midnight the cold grew intense. The camel men lighted big bonfires all
through the night wherever they found a few shrubs, but I was so ill with
fever that I had not the strength and energy to dismount from my camel,
on which I was shivering with cold although well wrapped up in blankets.

After marching eight miles from our last camp we came to a brackish well
where the camel men replenished their water-skins. I was rather
interested to see what dulled sense of taste these men of the desert
possessed. When I saw them making a rush for this well I thought that
probably we had come to fresh water, and on asking them they said this
was a well of excellent "sweet water." When I tasted it, it was so salt
that it quite made one's inflamed gums and palate smart with pain. I
noticed some days later that when we did actually get fairly sweet water
they could detect no difference between it and the most brackish water.

We had come through hilly and broken country, over low passes and narrow
gorges flanking dry river-beds. Then we had entered another immense flat
stretch of _lut_, quite level except an occasional solitary hillock
breaking the monotonous line of the horizon here and there. From one of
these hillocks (4,300 feet) near our camp of November 21st one got quite
an interesting panorama all round.

The highest mountain in sight was still the Naiband peak to the
south-west of us. A range which seemed about 50 miles off spread to the
north-west, and before it--about 20 miles distant from us--a very long
low hill range. In an arc from our west to our north were distinguishable
several high pointed peaks. A blackish brown, handsomely cut hill stood
prominent a mile or so from us in the middle of the plain.

To the north the country was much broken up and low. There was a stream
of salt water running from east to west with thick salt deposits on each
side of the water edge. To the north-east the hills showed no peculiar
characteristics but to the east and south-east could be observed two
short hill-ranges, much indented, of broken up and corroded rock, similar
to the many we had already found across the desert. To the north and to
the south of the hill range which stood to the east of us there were low
passes, and behind them again the flat _lut_.

The only thing of real interest in the absolutely bare parts of the
dese