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Overland to India : vol.2 |
LI THE SANDY DESERTS OF PERSIA 237
mention than those I have already cited, but of the southeastern extremity of the desert, between Neh and Barn, Curzon says, quoting Galindo : " Here the prevailing northwest winds have swept the sand together, and banked it up in huge mounds and hills, ever shifting and eddying." Reclus has the following passage : " Dans les déserts du
i sud-est de la Perse, ce sont les sables qui dominent. Le
vent les dispose en monticules qui se déplacent å chaque tempête, effaçant les traces des caravanes, recouvrant
ti parfois les cultures dans le voisinage des fontaines et des
h ruisseaux temporaires, assiégeant même les villages et les
~I cités." 1 Undoubtedly the south-eastern part of the Desht-i-
$ Lut is occupied by blown sand.
North-north-west of Hamun-i-Seistan is a desert, the name of which, Desht-i-naumid or the Desert of Despair,
I indicates its character. It extends to the south of the salt
" swamp Dak-i-petirgun, and seems for the most part to
belong to its basin. To the south, where Bellew crossed the desert between the Har-rud and Dorah, it contained, however, no sand. If a sandy belt exists it lies farther
41 north on the southern margin of the depression. On the
way to the Har-rud Bellew passed a hill called Rig-revan or thé moving sand, after the red sand-dunes occurring here, of which he says that they produce a ringing sound
t when trodden on.2
As regards the town of Yezd in Central Persia we might expect from its situation that it would be menaced
1 by blown sand. The town lies at the southern edge of a
long basin, and the north-west wind sweeps the sand unhindered between two hill-ranges in the direction of
E Yezd. The famous monk Odorico di Pordenone, the first
European who visited Lhasa, and during the years 1316 to 1330 travelled through the whole of western, southern, and Eastern Asia, was at Yezd on his outward journey, and gives the following striking description of the sandy belt near the city : " I travelled to a certain city called Jest, which is the farthest city of Persia towards India, from which the sea of sand is but one day distant. Now that
1 Nouvelle Géographie universelle, vol. ix. p. 175. 2 From the Indus to the Tigris, p. 284.
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