Situation of Zones without Rain, and of Deserts. 91 
Yezd, and likewise covered with salt and sand, in the centre 
of which is placed the oasis of Khubis, a real garden of fruit 
trees; besides, the whole of Kerman is rich in all sorts of 
vegetable productions, which flourish wherever irrigations can 
be established. 
In Farsistan, which is in the immediate neighbourhood of 
the Persian Gulf, the herbage is renewed between January 
and May, after the rains, and the agreeable and fertile plain 
of Schiraz (Lat. 29° 52’), is subjected to the same conditions. 
The mountains which surround it are also frequently enveloped 
in clouds ; and the melting of the snow, which takes place in 
spring, gives rise occasionally to disastrous floods. 
Further to the south, between 26° and 27° N., in Laristan, 
on the shores of the Persian Gulf, the heats become greater ; 
and it is there that the maritime strip of land is met with, 
whose high temperature has caused it to receive the name of 
Kermasir. Bender-Abassi and the island of Ormus are 
both notorious for their intolerable climate, their malaria, 
their saline soil, and the deficiency of trees and plants; but 
it is there that the town of Laar is placed, in a plain sur- 
rounded by a belt of hills ; and whose soil, although sandy, 
is covered with palms and orange trees. It is provided with 
cisterns and reservoirs, in which a drinkable water is col- 
lected, after the winter rains have sufficiently removed the 
salt from the soil. It is there also, between Schiraz and 
Laar, that the plain of Dadiran is situated, which, traversed 
by a river abounding in fish, and possessing a more moderate 
temperature, serves as a refuge for Europeans, exhausted by 
the local heats of Ormus. There is thus, in the whole of this 
region, rather an excess of heat than an absolute want of 
rain; although it sometimes happens that there is no rain at 
certain points during two or three consecutive years, a circum- 
stance which takes place more especially in Bender-Abassi. 
Positive data regarding the rainy reason are awanting as 
to a portion of Kohistan, and of the varied interior of Beloo- 
chistan ; nevertheless, if, on the one hand, we know that 
Pottinger, during a journey of five days, between Sarawan 
and Kullugan, did not find anything else but hills and downs 
of moving sand, destitute of vegetation, it must, on the other 
