64 OVERLAND TO INDIA CHAP.
hillocks, and well hidden in a ravine between them. The burial-ground of the village, however, is laid out close by the road, and it is not by chance that the guristan in Persia is almost always placed beside the highway, but purposely, that the dead may enjoy the company of the living, or that pilgrims, still wandering over the earth, may be reminded that they too must one day lie under gravestones. Or is it that the passers-by may, by their meditations and prayers, bring peace to the departed ? A partially ruined funereal mosque stands beside a water-reservoir called Hauz-i-masar or H auz-i- K hosroabad. It is full of water like all the others on the road. Hauz-i-Ali is the next. They are sheltered by brick vaults.
Two farsakh to the right is seen the white expanse of the kevir, like a large lake in which the hills are reflected. Our guide says that this kevir is now mostly covered with a shallow sheet of water after the late rain. A kevir always marks the lowest depression in a basin, and from its edge the land rises on all sides in slopes of detritus and hills, if never so slowly. All the drainage water, therefore, collects there, and after such a heavy rainfall as the last it is probable that a kevir so comparatively small as this one must be covered with water.
A succession of , villages lies between our road and the kevir : Kerimabad, Kasimabad, Hemetabad, and Aliabad, but Kurit, quite a town of houses huddled closely together, and adorned with cupolas, stands on the road, and amidst its grey quarters stand palm trees attracting the eyes by their verdure. Immediately below the village large fields of wheat extend, fresh and beautiful, with green spring blades of corn. From Kurit caravans start which are going to Bahabad.
The great highway is in parts sunk into the yellow clay to a depth of 16 feet, the sides standing up like walls, and, after coming up to a level with the fields, crosses a number of irrigation streams, which flow in raised conduits. The country is extensively cultivated, and it is astonishing to find so much productive land in
the midst of the desert. In direct connection with
Kurit stand the villages Ibrahimabad-i-bala and Ibra-
IIIF Color HighRes
