In the steppe at Shand-Ali-Riza-Khan they are turned out to graze at the foot of a small saddle. Here runs a drainage channel, or slaand, full of coarse sand, where it is only necessary to dig down 20 inches to find fresh water. I took a view over the country from an adjacent hillock—all alike dreary and disagreeable, all bare and barren, small low hills without order, dark outlines near at hand and lighter and fainter at greater distances. At four o'clock Kuh-i-Naibend was very faint, and a little later it had totally vanished, swallowed up in thick heavy clouds, which discharged heavy showers of rain mingled with hail. With a strong, north-westerly wind, and the thermometer marking 55.4° at nine o'clock, it was cold rather than warm. The height was 2 766 feet.
The next day's march leads us through the same desolate country as before, a succession of flat basins, ground falling in general southwards to the Lut, a boundless and little exhilarating prospect. Kuh-i-Naibend shows itself again, and K uh-i- I spendiar, which is part of Kuh-i-margho, to the north-north-west. A third prominent hill, lying before us to the east, is called Kuh-i-germab. On the right the great Lut desert is but seldom visible, being usually hidden by low ridges and saddles. The ground is bestrewn with fine pebbles of the same reddish-brown weathered porphyrite which occurs in the solid rock at the sides.
After another saddle the view to the east is unlimited, immense flat spaces opening out in this direction. Some dark specks in the distance resolve themselves, after a considerable time, into two men with three camels. At one o'clock we have only 61.9°, though we are much lower than at Naibend, where the temperature was much higher. But the fresh, north-westerly wind comes from cooler regions.
We march and march, and still seem to be in the centre
of the same monotonous landscape, and we tramp over flat undulations like the swell on a sea. The ground is coloured brown, red, and purple by the carpet of pebbles, and occasionally shows a tinge of green where shrubs grow in a low trench. At the sides rise small ridges, dark above and becoming lighter down the slopes, which merge into
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