snow. But in front of us there is no change in the landscape, the sharp jagged coast-line runs on south-eastwards, while the sand, however, becomes ever higher and more barren. The dunes are now ioo feet high, and sometimes we can go for ten minutes along the top of a sandhill as on the bottom of an upturned punt. A small detached bit of kevir, surrounded on all sides by high dunes, is left on the right. Another is larger, and some isolated sand-hills stand up in it like islands in the middle of a lake. Three more such kevir flats without sand are passed. It seems as if the sand were heaped up on a substratum of kevir, which, if such is the case, must be firmer than elsewhere to be able to bear the burden. Possibly the sand covering protects the material of the kevir from atmospheric moisture, and promotes desiccation to a greater depth. The small detached hollows of kevir have formerly formed parts of the great Kevir bay, but the sand has encroached and they have finally been enclosed in it.
The last detached kevir flat we pass is drawn out from WSW. to ENE., and on its flat surface stand two cairns marking the route between Yezd and Tebbes, the last stage being Mehrijan. Five such nishan or way-marks have been erected by Parsis from Yezd within the sandy belt, to guide travellers in foggy weather. No other sign of a road is visible. After rain men have to travel through the sand, but at other times they try to make use, as far as possible, of the flat kevir flats, which here play the same part as the bayirs in the desert between Cherchen and Tatran in Eastern Turkestan.
The sand is of two shades, a lighter and a darker yellow. The latter is wet, the former, which lies chiefly on more exposed convex surfaces, is dry. When the wind sweeps over them, the dry light sand may be seen spreading itself over the dark. The dunes now become lower, and are clothed with vegetation. We try to cross a kevir creek. It bears, and also the next, and for the rest of the day's march we can keep outside the sandspits. It proves that the Kevir at this part consists to a large extent of sand, and therefore as long as it remains dry bears better than elsewhere, affording us an excellent path where we are no longer obliged to go
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