'Through Persia on a side-saddle' [‎214] (249/360)

214 THROUGH PERSIA ON A SIDE-SADDLE
chests, much as I have seen the locks of ladies arranged
in old-fashioned portraits. All the Baluchis are Sunnis,
and fervently hate the Persian Skiahs, adoring Omar,
who is execrated by the Persians; and one of our ser
vants nearly caused a disturbance here by speaking in
disrespectful language of that vigorous, all-conquering
Khalif.
The Baluchi women looked thin and starved, poor
things, wearing white or black woollen garments, strongly
suggestive of nightgowns, and only making a half
hearted pretence of covering their faces with the veil
worn over head and shoulders.
It was most pleasant to wander about the extensive
date-groves, watered by three parallel streams winding
among the crops of barley and Indian corn springing
up under the trees. The whole place was perfumed by
patches of beans in full flower, and we had the unwonted
sight of lettuces and young onions, while tiny purple
irises gemmed the grass. We had to cross and recross
the streams continually, over somewhat insecure bridges
formed of hollowed-out palm-trunks through which water
poured, and on the edges of which we had to balance
ourselves as best we could.
It is wonderful with what a charm palms are able to
invest any place, no matter how squalid and mean, and
we kept within the dimly lit aisles of the graceful trees,
for outside the ground was bare and sandy with salt
efflorescence in places, tamarisks with curious grey-looking
needles growing in abundance. We made an inspection of
the various old forts of Pahra, the oldest being merely a
large mound of rubbish, with a fragment of mud wall
remaining. In this rainless climate it might have dated