National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

visited on our journey from Balūchistān before definitely turning south to gain
the coast of the Persian Gulf. A special direction was given to this move by the
information received at Isfandaqeh of *tumps* resembling those seen in Jīruft to be
found at Darūyi near the centre of the Bulūk tract. This indication fortunately
allowed me to choose a route across ground which the Survey of India map
showed as unsurveyed. It led up a wide gently sloping valley where wild pis-
tachio and pomegranate bushes grew, to the Chorchur saddle (6,550 feet).
From it a distant view opened to the rugged range overlooking Jīruft from the
west and to the Kōh-i-Kalmurz dominating Rūdbār on the south. As we descended
an open valley to the south-east the vegetation marking subterraneous drainage
grew less and the detritus slopes more broken. After covering some 24 miles we
were glad to be guided, as darkness set in, to the spring of Ābīd, hidden in a
rocky ravine (4,750 feet).

The next day's march took us down by a wide flood-bed traversing broad
gravel slopes to the small hamlet of Sāmk (2,800 feet), where a spring irrigates
some fields and a plantation of date-palms. With much broken and utterly
barren foot-hills around, the scenery typically marked our return to the Garmsīr
or 'Hot Region'. Thence we turned south and, descending over a bare glacis of
Piedmont gravel, reached the thin date-palm groves of Darūyi (2,050 feet) near
the bottom of the wide depression known as Bulūk. The palm groves and some
fields of the hamlet receive irrigation from a *qanāt* fed by drainage from the hill
chain we had descended.

The mound, or *tappa*, of Darūyi measures about 200 yards from east to west
and some 88 yards across where widest. It rises to a height of 37 feet above the
field-level on its north side. Potsherds of undecorated coarse ware of reddish
colour or bearing a whitish-grey slip lay plentifully exposed on the slopes. Only
very few painted fragments could be found, with roughly drawn simple patterns
in black or brown (Dar. 2, 3; Pl. XXV) which recalled those of the 'late pre-
historic' ware from certain sites of Northern Balūchistān.³ Only protracted
excavation could have shown whether the mound had grown up above the
remains of a chalcolithic or still earlier settlement. So much, however, seemed
clear that such prolonged settled occupation as the height of the mound indi-
cated, in times preceding *qanāt* cultivation, presupposed a regular supply of
water from the flood-bed, now dry, passing Darūyi on the south or from some
other surface drainage now wanting.

This conclusion was strengthened when on the morning of November 22nd
I examined the mound, known as *Tappa-i-Nūrābād* (Fig. 56), situated half a
mile farther west and also near the flood-bed just mentioned. Much broken by