wo yellow walls of clay, topped by
endless thickets of tamarisk and nameless scrub. Matthews wondered,
disappointed, whether a jungle looked like that, and if some black-maned
lion walked more softly in it, or slept less soundly, hearing the pant
of the unknown creature in the river. But there was no lack of more
immediate lions in the path. The sun, for one thing, as the Brazilian
had predicted, proved a torment against which double awnings faced with
green were of small avail. Then the treacheries of a crooked and
constantly shallowing channel needed all the attention the travelers
could spare. And the rapids of Kaleh Bunder, where a rocky island
flanked by two reefs threatened to bar any further progress, afforded
the liveliest moments of their day.

The end of that day, nevertheless, found our sight-seer smoking
cigarettes in Shir Ali Khan's garden at Dizful and listening to the
camel bells that jingled from the direction of certain tall black
pointed arches straddling the dark river. When Matthews looked at those
arches by sunlight, and at the queer old flat-topped yellow town visible
through them, he regretted that he had made up his mind to continue his
journey so soon. However, he was coming back. So he packed off Gaston
and the Bakhtiari to Sheleilieh, where they and their motor-boat
belonged. And he himself, with his servant Abbas and the _charvadar_ of
whom they hired horses, set out at nightfall for the mountain citadel of
Bala Bala. For there the great Salman Taki Khan, chieftain of the lower
Lurs, otherwise known as the Father of Swords, was to celebrate as
became a redoubtable vassal of a remote and youthful suzerain the
coronation of Ahmed Shah Kajar.

It was nearly morning again when, after a last scramble up a trough of
rocks and gravel too steep for riding, the small cavalcade reached a
plateau in the shadow of still loftier elevations. Here they were
greeted by a furious barking of dogs. Indeed it quickly became necessary
to organize a defence of whips and stones against the guardians of that
high plateau. The uproar soon brought a shout out of the darkness. The
_charvadar_ shouted back, and after a long-distance colloquy there
appeared a figure crowned by the tall _kola_ of the Brazilian's boatmen,
who drove the dogs away. The dialect in which he spoke proved
incomprehensible to Matthews. Luckily it was not altogether so to Abbas,
that underling long resigned to the eccentricities of the _Firengi_,