8 Records of the Indian Museum. [Vion xcV Aims 
very fine particles of even structure.! Along their summits a com- 
paratively thin layer contains numerous pebbles similar to those 
that cover the surrounding desert,” and it is from this layer that 
the pebbles of the beach are derived. The cliffs themselves are 
being continually eaten away by wind and occasional rain and 
undermined by floods, which cause great blocks of clay to fall 
down on to the shore. 
No trace of shells or other animal remains has been found in 
the clay of the cliffs. The clay of the bottom of the open lake in 
their vicinity is very similar in general appearance though natur- 
ally much softer, but contains empty shells of Lamellidens and 
Corbicula in a remarkably unworn condition. 
The normal flood-level is marked on the shores of the lake by 
a drift-line consisting mainly of the broken stems and the inflo- 
rescences of reeds. 
Perhaps the most prominent feature of this part of the Hamun 
is the enormous beds of reeds that cover a large part of its area. 
These reeds are of three kinds. Each kind grows separately but 
beds of each are to be found in the midst of those of the other 
two. The most abundant species is a form of Phragmites exactly 
intermediate, as my friend Dr. H. G. Carter informs me, between 
the Palaearctic P. communis and the Indian P. kharka. This 
reed covers hundreds of square miles in the flood season and 
gives its name (naz) to the Naizar or reed-country that affords 
valuable pasturage for sheep and cattle. When the floods sink 
the reeds die down as the soil dries, but those that have estab- 
lished themselves in deeper water flourish throughout the year. 
Next in abundance is Scirpus littoralis, which also covers large 
areas but does not extend so far out from the lake, and finally we 
have a bulrush of the genus Typha, which is rather less abundant 
than the other two species. 
The reed-beds provide the means of life to two distinct classes 
of people who live on the shores of the Hamun—the Gaodar or 
cowherds and the Saiyads or hunters. The Gaodar have large 
herds of cattle, which they feed on the young shoots of Phragmites 
and Typha, both fresh and dry, and particularly on the Scirpus. 
Both tribes construct their dwellings entirely of Phragmites, and 
both make curious little skiffs, not unlike the papyrus skiffs of 
ancient Egypt, of the leaves of the bulrush—the only craft on the 
waters of Seistan. 
The reed-beds are penetrated in all directions by narrow 
channels said to be made by the cattle of the Gaodar wading out 
to pasture, but probably kept open by the people themselves for 
use in bird-catching and fishing. The water in these channels is 
turbid near the shore of the lake but clear and of a yellowish tinge 
| For sections of the cliffs of Seistan see Huntington’s account of ‘‘ The 
Basin of Eastern Persia and Seistan ”, in Explorations in Turkistan (Expedttion 
of 1903), published by the Carnegie Institution of Washington (1905). 
? See Vredenburg, Mem Geol. Surv. Ind. XXXI, p. 179 (1901). 
