.

We had come forty miles from Sahlabad, and Abbas Ali brought us the news
from the village that we should find no water on our course for fifteen
miles more and no habitations for forty-eight more miles. Unluckily, we
had hardly enough provisions to last one day, and we perceived a fair
prospect before us of having to go one day without food, when Abbas Ali
was despatched for a third time for another eight miles' walk to the
village and back to see what he could get in the way of edibles.

He returned, riding a cow, in company with another man, and a third
fellow on a mule carrying a fat sheep. The latter was there and then
purchased and killed, and we had a copious breakfast before starting
along the winding dry bed of the river at 11.30 a.m. on December 2nd.

Before us to the south by south-west (190 deg. b.m.) was a lofty flat-topped
mountain which appeared about fifteen miles off, and directly in front of
our course was also another and more extensive long, flat-topped mountain
stretching from north-east to south-west, three miles off, with
precipitous sides towards the north-west and north. The sides were padded
with sand accumulations which reached almost to the summit of the lower
portions of the mountain barrier. To the south-west, approximately twenty
miles off, stood a high range.

West and north-westerly winds blew every day in a fierce manner, usually
from sunset till about ten or eleven o'clock the following morning, at
which hour they somewhat abated. They are, no doubt, due to the great
jumps in the temperature at sunset and sunrise. On December 1st, for
instance, from 112 deg. in the sun during the day the thermometer dropped to
20 deg. at night, or 12 deg. of frost. On December 2nd at noon it was up again as
high as 114 deg..

We traversed a plain twelve miles long and at its south-east course,
where the mountain ranges met, there occurred a curious
spectacle--evidently of volcanic formation. On the top of the black hills
of gravel and sand lying in a confused mass, as if left so by an
upheaval, rose a pinnacle of bright yellow and red stone, with patches
of reddish earth and of a dissimilar texture to the underlying surface of
the hill. There seemed little doubt that both the rocky pinnacle and the
red earth had been thrown there by some force--and under the projecting
rocks and masses of soft earth one could, in fact, find a different
formation altogether, bearing the same characteristics as the