THE ANCIENT CLIMATE OF IRAN 317
Makran [southeastern Persia and southwestern Baluchistan], the temperature in the shade was generally about 100 degrees, while water was almost nonexistent, and what little there was we could scarcely drink [because it was so saline]." In speaking of the whole journey from Chahbar to Kir-man during the months from October, 1893, to June, 1894, Sykes says : " Throughout the journey forage was our chief anxiety [although the caravan numbered only from a dozen to twenty men, with a corresponding number of horses]." Among the higher mountains of this corner of Persia, water can usually be found by digging in the dry watercourses, although it is very poor and scarce. Forage, however, is always hard to obtain, and the governors-general of the province almost never visit the district because of the scarcity of supplies. Yet Alexander must have crossed it with a large army. Northeast of Bampur, even in March, when vegetation is at its best, forage was so scarce that the governor-general, whose official guest Sykes was, had had a supply stored at every stage. The " desert stretch of more than 150 miles " along the north side of the Jaz Morian salt swamp, according to Sykes's account, was once thickly populated, as is shown by numerous ruins, and by the remnants of kariz, to the reported number of two hundred, which are now dry. Many of the kariz have probably been abandoned because of wars, but that does not explain how Alexander procured water for an army where there are now merely salt pools : nor how he procured forage for all his baggage animals where to-day a few score can barely subsist.
The division of Alexander's army which marched through Afghanistan under Krateros appears to have had no special
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