LIII TO THE SHORE OF THE HAMUN 259
against their intrusion, especially at supper, when the single dish is peppered over with them.
Next day we march on farther towards the lake. The country before us is exceedingly level, and the horizon is quite flat, for the last small elevations are behind us except in the south-east, where a very low table hill is seen, Kuh-iKhoja. To the east-south-east there is a brightness as of a highly-polished damascened blade. It is the lake, and we seem to be almost on a level with its surface. We again cross a row of terraces and a very considerable torrent bed, which receives all the smaller channels in the neighbourhood. On its bank a wolf stands gazing. The dogs are after him like a shot, but he is too quick for them. In the neighbourhood is a little rabat or shelter called Bereng, a well with brackish water, but it cannot be seen from our way. At ten o'clock the air still feels fresh, but the wind blows from the east, and is cooled in passing over the broad sheet of water.
It is trying to the patience to go towards a sheet of water in a flat basin, for we march and march and yet we seem no nearer. Now we have travelled two and a half
hours straight towards the lake, and yet the scene has not changed. A row of very small terraced mounds running NNE. marks the limit of the lake's possible extension in its present state. The gravel thins out and comes to an end, and is replaced by flat yellow silt which has cracked in drying. And then at last we are on the shore of the Hamun, with waves seething on its light-green water. Down here it is quite pleasant, with the thermometer at 69. I°, and the water is 4.2 degrees warmer than the air, and is quite sweet. But the lake is bare and bald, and there is no sign of vegetation. The nine observations I took gave for the Hamun a mean height of 168o feet.
After staying a while for breakfast and enjoying the splash of the cool waves, so strange to us, we followed the shore to the east-south-east. It afforded an excellent path of bare, hard silt, dry, yellow clay. We passed a camp of lake-dwellers who had pitched their tents in a long row along the beach. To the right, a few miles off, was seen a minaret, called Mil-i- Nadir, or " Nadir's mark " ; it is
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