"عبر بلاد فارس على سرج ركوب جانبي" [‎٢‎٤‎٩] (٣٦٠/٢٨٨)

TO QUETTA WITH THE BRITISH COMMISSION 249
over the scrub which often grew on the winding path, too
narrow for us to ride abreast. Before reaching our
camping-place that morning, we passed the pishkhana
camels, which had been fifteen hours accomplishing the
thirty miles, that we had done in a third of the time.
They looked quite worn out, and one poor creature had
been cut adrift a couple of miles back and lay on the road,
looking with appealing eyes at those who passed it by.
A camel is always given a chance to recover ; for if it
revives it can pick up a livelihood in any district, however
barren, and will rejoin its own caravan, or perhaps be found
and annexed by another one.
All about this part of the country were traces of a once
widespread cultivation, and the ruins of many apparently
large towns. Colonel Holdich picked up specimens of
pottery and glass beads in these mounds of debris which
pointed to a higher state of civilisation than that possessed
by the few and dirty inhabitants who dwell here at the
present time.
The whole of the valleys through which we were now
passing were terraced, tier above tier of low slate walls
often reaching some way up the sides of the hills, and
these remains, which point to a much greater rainfall than
at present, are called by the Baluchis Ghor (or Gabr) bastas
(buildings of the infidel). Colonel Holdich was inclined
to put them down to the Arab occupation of the country,
and the theory is that deforestation, both here and through
out Persia, is the cause of the present dryness and barren
ness of both countries ; and probably it is so, as the rainfall
of Tehran has become considerably greater in the memory
of man, since Persians and Kuropeans have vied with one
another in planting its environs.