was at once summoned to my tent and was very welcome, for his knowledge was more extensive than the ketkhoda's. At. Mulkabad, our next day's camping-ground, we should find better water than here, and at Kuh-i-nakshir it was quite sweet. At the former place we should find no people, but at the latter five herdsmen were watching 70 camels belonging to Ali Abdullah, a gellea'ar or grazier. A farsakh beyond Kuh-i-nakshir we should come upon tolerable water, grazing, and fuel at the spring Cheshme-Kerim. Quite 5 farsakhs farther on our route was a shat or river, and beyond the land was rig-Win, that is, inhabited by spirits, but human beings never went there, and two men who had made the attempt a few years ago had been drowned in salt slough. Our man knew a way from Tallhe to Sefid-ab, which could not be reached direct from Cheshme-Kerim, and east of this spring the country was only an impenetrable saline marsh. From Cheshme- Kerim a route ran through desert to Semnan, and my servant Gulam Hussein had once tried a way from Damghan through Frat and Rishm and through the Kevir to Jandak. He had travelled two nights and a day or a distance of 3o farsakh through perfect desert, level as a floor, and without a trace of life in any form. Half-way he had seen hills and mounds, and the track seemed to run along a slight rise in the ground, with salt depressions on both sides. From CheshmeKerim was seen, to the east, a very small hill, which could not be reached under any circumstances, for it stood like an island in the midst of a salt marsh of bottomless mud.
The newcomer was much perplexed about the reason and object of our journey, and said that he could not
I understand how any man in the full possession of his senses
could purposely direct his steps to the Kevir, where he had every prospect of being lost, and where, moreover, spirits had their home and played their pranks. But he did not know that the object of my journey was precisely to see the Kevir, the wet salt desert in its flat depression, and to observe how its margin passed into dry desert and steppe. And now we had to proceed to a point whence we could set out towards this dismal country.
As regards herdsmen and the conditions of their life,
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