poured down, and the old man, our host, advised me earnestly to lie as close to the wall as possible, for he could not answer for the cupola, which might come down at any moment.
The rain ceased at seven o'clock on the morning of February 14, after lasting continuously for twenty hours, but the sky was dark and threatening all day long, and a little rain fell at two o'clock. We bade farewell to Abbasabad, crossed the stream bed mentioned above, and left Kuh-i-kuddelau on the east and nearer on the west Kuh-i-hamsau, a direct prolongation of Kuh-i-siah-tagh. At 5 or 6 farsakh to the west stood Kuh-i-gumbei, which rises above Ferrukhi, and was now snow-clad from top to bottom. It is strange to see a snow-clad hill in a germsir ; but it was simply that the late precipitation had taken the form of snow on the heights, and it would soon disappear.
After crossing the road from Jandak and Cha-no to Khur we come to Mil-i-divun, a stream carrying 105 cubic feet of very muddy and bitter salt water, which, however, is said to be sweet farther up. The case is the same with Rudkhaneh-i-gohugun, both streams becoming salt when they come in contact with the ground of the Kevir. They are then called no longer Rudkhaneh, but Shur-ab. From the right bank of the Mil-i-divun runs off a race which drives a mill (asiab). Then we cross an arm of the Kevir and afterwards a belt of firm ground, where the reservoir Hauz-i-hizer is placed in the midst of a large expanse of mud. At its southern end lie the ruins of the recently abandoned hamlet Hizer.
Then follows an arm of the Kevir nearly a farsakh in breadth, where the slippery mud was so softened by the recent rain and swollen up that we sank in more than a foot and were muddy up to the knees from scrambling through it. This inlet or bay of the Kevir is said to extend 8 farsakh westwards up to Cha-melik and Ser-i-cha-absel. Strictly speaking, one can scarcely call it an arm or bay, but it is rather a furrow to which the streams and rivers from the west collect the fine material which passes into Kevir clay ; it is a sort of mud stream
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