strong south-easterly wind came again, with yellow dust swirls. The whole steppe was stirred up as before in a cotillon of elves and sprites, and heaven and earth were in an uproar.
We had done enough for the day, and encamped in the midst of the desert half a farsakh from the well Cha-i-sihebal (3652 feet). It was by no means easy to pitch the tents and tauten the ropes in the wind, but pleasant to get at length under cover, and then listen all the evening to the storm roaring like a waterfall outside.
After such a march we slept as soundly as the dead, and I did not notice the squalls in the night. But fresh traces of water were seen in the morning in all the furrows round the camp, and the tents were heavy with moisture. Barely half an hour on the way from the camp the caravan halted to collect fuel in case we should encamp among bare hills. Nomads' tents were seen in several places, and at some of them dogs kept watch.
We advanced eastwards over rising ground, and at eleven o'clock the clouds had piled themselves up in such masses that we could not well escape a thorough drenching. We got it, too, and it quickly developed into a complete cloudburst ; it dashed down with tremendous violence. In five minutes all the furrows were full of water, and it was an unusual sight to see these innumerable, small yellow channels bright with running, purling water-brooks. They meander over the evenly falling detritus slope, turning and dividing and uniting again time after time, and the water is thick and reddish yellow from all the fine solid matter it carries with it. These separate rain storms, which come sweeping over with their bluish-purple, hanging, and trailing rain fringes, have an exceeding imposing appearance. Behind us the country is in bright sunlight, but here the rain comes down in bucketsful over the eastern hills. In the south also the sky is sprinkled with scattered white clouds, and the country is lighted by the sun, but over Kuh-i-bubah and Kuh-i-Neh, to the east, the thunder growls and the lightning flashes follow one another. To the north - west the sky is streaked vertically in a curious manner. Yellow swirls rise from the ground, and seem
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