226 FROM GALEHDAR TO BUSHIRE [Chap. VIII
above the bed of the stream. The sloping ground on the top, only some 50 yards across where widest, bears on the side opposite to these precipices the badly decayed remains of a defensive line stretching for about a quarter of a mile. It is formed by a wall of unhewn stones set in earth, with debris heaps from a few ruined towers of the same rough construction meant to strengthen the line. Remains of small dwellings built with rubble and mortar were traced here and there between the line of wall and the brink of the precipice. The fragments of coarse red pottery, all plain, picked up between the ruined walls afforded no indication as to the approximate date of the fortification.
The same evening there arrived a messenger with a letter from Sohrab Khan assuring us of protection as far as his seat at Warawi, and promising to use his influence with the tribal chiefs of the Tarakuma lower down to help in our progress towards Ishkanan. As any other route in the direction of Lar was sure to be blocked in consequence of the Qashqai disturbance, we started on January 29th for Warawi. The journey of some 34 miles was done in two marches under the protection of Sohrab Khan's armed tufangchis, and, apart from a clumsy attempt at robbery by one of them, passed without incident. The route led down the open valley past Galehdar and FM to a group of small villages with date-palm groves and other scanty cultivation, irrigated from little streams descending from the foot of the coastal range. One of them, Chah Husain, had been completely burned down and destroyed during some fighting carried on a few years before with its neighbours. We halted for the night at the hamlet of Chah Sargaya. Next day, after marching 7 miles, we passed the village of Mohur, which holds some hundred families of Saiyyids and is situated where a spur descending from the south causes the valley to contract. The immunity of the village from local disturbances, due to the holy descent of its inhabitants, was reflected by the greater extent and better cultivation of its lands. Mohur is the last village counted as being within the Galehdar tract, and a conspicuous watch tower on the end of the spur to the south marks the boundary towards Warawi.
The valley beyond widens considerably, but most of the flat trough is left uncultivated in spite of the increased volume of the stream that drains and at times inundates it. As the villages to the south were at feud with Warawi we had to keep to a less direct track, along which the only inhabited place was the small fortified hamlet of Hajiabad ( Fig. 83), with a well-built cistern that looked old. After passing over a wide area of salt-encrusted ground left wholly to grazing, and crossing the stream near the palm grove of Narmûn, we reached Warawi by the evening of January 30th. This large village, counting some 300 households, has for a long time past held a bad reputation for the predatory propensities of its inhabitants. It was hence reassuring to find in Sohrab Khan,
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