diameter were also met with
at intervals of every two miles or so by the side of the track, and
this very often in districts where nothing was visible but a boundless
waste of loose, drifting sand. Our Baluchis could not or would not
explain the _raison d'etre_ of them, though the stones must, in many
instances, have been brought great distances and for a definite
purpose. I could not, however, get any explanation regarding them at
either Kelat or Quetta.

With the exception of the Lakh Pass leading over a chain of hills
about eighteen miles due west of Beila, the road to Noundra was as
flat as a billiard-table. The crossing of the Lakh, however, was not
accomplished without much difficulty and some danger; for the narrow
pathway, leading over rocky, almost perpendicular, cliffs, three to
four hundred feet high, had, in places, almost entirely crumbled away.
The summits of these cliffs present a curious appearance--fifty to
sixty needle-like spires, hardly a couple of feet thick at the top,
which look as if the hand of man and not of nature had placed them in
the symmetrical order in which they stand, white and clear-cut against
the deep-blue sky, slender and fragile as sugar ornaments, and looking
as though a puff of wind would send them toppling over. The ascent
was terribly hard work for the camels, and, as the track is totally
unprotected by guard-rail of any kind, anything but comfortable for
their riders. Towards the summit we met a couple of these beasts laden
with tobacco from Kej, in charge of a wild-looking fellow in rags,
as black as a coal, who eyed us suspiciously, and answered in sulky
monosyllables when asked where he hailed from. His merchandise,
consisting of four small bags, seemed hardly worth the carrying, but
Kej tobacco fetches high prices in Beila. At this point the pathway
had latterly been widened by order of the Djam. Formerly, if two
camels travelling in opposite directions met, their respective owners
drew lots. The animal belonging to the loser was then sacrificed and
pushed over the precipice to clear the way for the other.

In the wet season a foaming torrent dashes through the Valley of Lakh,
but this was, at the time of my visit, a dry bed of rock and shingle.
Indeed, although we were fairly fortunate as regard wells, and I was
never compelled to put the caravan on short allowance, I did not
pass a single stream of running water the whole way from Sonmiani to
Dhaira, twenty miles sout