174 FROM KERMAN TO BANDAR ABBAS [Chap. VI
qandts to a small ruined fort occupying the top of a low mound near an outlying patch of cultivation known as Kahn5 Panchar. Fragments of burnt bricks covered the mound in plenty, but neither painted nor glazed potsherds were to be found here.
Our onward march led thence west past Saiyyidabad, with the large mansion unfinished and already half-decayed of the late chief landowner of Bultik, imprisoned for years. Soon leaving cultivated ground behind, we crossed the watershed towards the Gulashgird river over a succession of low gravel plateaux and ridges. It forms here the divide between the sea and the drainageless basin of Rûdbar that we had traversed in the spring. The wide alluvial plain reached beyond was found to bear plenty of scrub and jungle trees. Still more convincing proof of moisture descending to it from the mountains which gird the Isfandaqeh plateau was afforded by an extensive patch of ground more than a mile across where intermittent cultivation, known as bdshkdri, is carried on by semi-nomadic graziers in years of sufficient rainfall. Of former more permanent cultivation no trace was to be found as we sought our way through jungle growth to the zidrat of Hazrat `Abbas, where a well fully 50 feet deep allowed us to get water and to camp.
On the morning of November 23rd we struck due south across the flat valley bottom, here, too, scrub-covered for the most part and showing here and there patches of former bdshkdri cultivation. Then, after having gone some 6 miles and crossed a shallow and wide flood-bed, we arrived at a stony alluvial fan descending from the foot of the Kôh-i-Kalmurz hill chain, and found there a considerable series of burial cairns, or dambs, such as our guide from Darûyi had reported. They rose only 2-3 feet above the uniform waste of rubble, and were very roughly built. One of the two, which the curiosity of our escort officer allowed us to open, contained a few small fragments of human bones. The jungle below the alluvial fan is visited by graziers and known as Damél.
From here onwards for a distance of close on 4 miles there were found at short intervals much larger series of cairns scattered over the stony glacis at the foot of the hills stretching to the west. At one of these burial-places, obviously of pre-Muhammadan times, I counted more than 150 cairns. In one of these, about 9 feet in diameter, numerous bone fragments were found at a depth of about 2 feet, and among them pieces of a human skull. A small jar, wheel-made and broken in antiquity, measured 31 inches across below the neck; within it lay a semi-fossilized date. Extensive clusters of cairns could be seen to continue well beyond the point where we recrossed the flood-bed skirting the detritus-covered foot of the hills. Some 3 miles farther on we reached the village of Darra-shôr, ensconced among date-palm groves. These and the fields cultivated by the
IIIF Color HighRes
