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

174

qanāts to a small ruined fort occupying the top of a low mound near an out-
lying patch of cultivation known as Kahnū 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 Saiyyidābād, with the large mansion
unfinished and already half-decayed of the late chief landowner of Bulūk, im-
prisoned for years. Soon leaving cultivated ground behind, we crossed the
watershed towards the Gulāshgird river over a succession of low gravel plateaux
and ridges. It forms here the divide between the sea and the drainageless basin
of Rūdbār 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 bāshkārī, 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 ziārat
of Hazrat 'Abbās, 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 bāshkārī 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 Kōh-i-Kalmurz hill chain, and found there a con-
siderable series of burial cairns, or dambs, such as our guide from Darūyi 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 Damēl.

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 3½ 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-shōr,
ensconced among date-palm groves. These and the fields cultivated by the