was curious. There were what at first appeared
to be hundreds of small mounds like ant-hills--round topped and greyish,
or in patches of light brown, with yellow sand deposits exposed to the
air on the surface. On getting nearer they appeared to be long
flat-topped ridges evidently formed by water-borne matter--probably at
the epoch when this was the sea or lake bottom.

"_Khup es!_" (It is all right!) said the coachman, inviting me to mount
again--and in a sudden outburst of exuberant affection he embraced the
naughty horse and kissed him fondly on the nose. The animal reciprocated
the coachman's compliment by promptly kicking the front splashboard of
the carriage to smithereens.

We crossed a bridge. To the east the water-level mark, made when this
valley was under water, is plainly visible on the strata of gravel with
reddish mud above, of which the hills are formed.

Then, rising gradually, the diligence goes over a low pass and along a
flat plateau separating the first basin we have left behind from a
second, more extensive, of similar formation. The hills in this second
basin appear lower. To the S.S.E. is a horseshoe-shaped sand dune, much
higher than anything we had so far encountered, and beyond it a range of
mountains. Salt can be seen mixed with the pale-brownish mud of the soil.

Then we drive across a third basin, large and flat, with the scattered
hills getting lower and seemingly worn by the action of weather. They are
not so corrugated by water-formed channels as the previous ones we had
passed. Twenty feet or so below the summit of the hills a white sediment
of salt showed itself plainly.

The fourth basin is at a higher level than the others--some 100 feet or
so above the third--and is absolutely flat, with dark, gravelly soil.

Azizawad village has no special attraction beyond the protecting wall
that encloses it--like all villages of Persia--and the domed roofs of
houses to which one begins to get reconciled. Next to it is the very
handsome fruit garden of Khale-es-Sultan.

At Khale Mandelha the horses are changed. The road becomes very
undulating, with continuous ups and downs, and occasional steep ascents
and descents. Glimpses of the large salt lake, Daria-i-Nimak, or the
Masileh, as it is also called, are obtained, and eventually we had quite
a pretty view with high blue mountains in the background and rocky black
mounds between the spectator and the silvery sheet of water.

Aliabad has a