'Through Persia on a side-saddle' [‎201] (236/360)

201
CHAPTER XIV
through the desert to bampur and pahra
W e had talked so much about the Great Persian Desert,
which stretches up to Khorassan and forms an almost
insuperable barrier between the different parts of the
country, that 1 was prepared to pass the next week toiling
through wastes of rolling sand and perhaps suffering the
tortures of thirst so eloquently described by Professor
Vambery.
The Dasht-i-Lut, a term interpreted by some to mean
' naked land,' by others the ' Land of Lot,' is believed to
have been a great inland sea, Yezd having been an island
on its outskirts. This theory is supported by the extinct
volcano of Basman and the active one of Kuh-i-Taftan,
which rise from its supposed shores, volcanoes being
almost invariably found by the sea.
One of the few small villages in the vast area of this
desert is called Yunsi, and tradition says it was here that
the Yunas or Jonah, of the Bible, was cast up by the
whale.
Marco Polo traversed this uninviting region from the
south to the north, and my brother is perhaps the first
European who has followed the route taken by the great
Venetian.