ed brick. The ruins of a madrassah, with a mosque and a
_mihrab_, were most extensive, and had traces of ornamentations, and an
inscription, said to be Kufic. The walls of the citadel were (in 1872) in
fairly good repair. "The citadel," Sir F. Goldsmid relates, "was of a
circular form, somewhat irregular in shape, with a diameter of from two
to three hundred yards. The walls are about fifty feet high, built
strongly of baked brick, with a species of arched covered gallery, five
feet high and five feet wide, running round the summit of the ramparts."

A very similar arrangement was to be seen on the Zaidan fort, as can be
noticed in the photograph which I took and which is reproduced in the
full page illustration (facing page 206).

"Two massive round towers guard the gateway approached by a narrow steep
ascent. In the centre of the fort on a mound stood a superior house,
probably the residence of the Governor. To the south,[6] dense drifts of
sand run to the summits of the ramparts."

If these drifts can rise so high on the high wall of the citadel, it is
certain that a great many of the smaller buildings must be rather deep
under the sand level by now, but that they are there, there can be little
doubt, for fragments of tiles, bricks, vases, &c., strew the ground. No
doubt the usual critic will wonder how it is that, if the houses are
buried, these fragments are not buried also. The wind principally is
responsible for their keeping on the surface of the sand. They are
constantly shifted and are blown from place to place, until arrested by
some obstacle such as a wall, where a great number of these fragments can
generally be found collected by the wind.

"The great characteristic of these ruins"--continues Sir F. Goldsmid--"is
the number of accurately constructed arches which still remain, and which
are seen in almost every house, and the remains of strongly built
windmills, with a vertical axis, as is usually the case in Sistan."

This again, as we have seen, is also one of the characteristics of the
Zaidan buildings.

The ruins of Peshawaran are subdivided into several groups, such as the
Kol Marut, Saliyan, three miles east of the fort, Khushabad,
Kalah-i-Mallahun, Nikara-Khanah, &c.

Bellew, who camped at Saliyan, describes this section of the ruins "which
cover many square miles of country, with readily distinguishable mosques
and colleges (madrassahs), and the Arabic inscriptions traceable on the
facades of