Black Partridges 5 



and flourishing country. The ruins of this 

 Zahidan (or Zarang), through which we were 

 passing, extend north and south for many 

 miles. For centuries it remained a flourishing 

 city, till a fatal day when, as legend has it, the 

 great Timur, "lord of Thrace and Samarkand," 

 besieged it and was beaten back, receiving at the 

 same time the wound which made him for ever 

 Timur lang, the lame Timur. His revenge was 

 characteristic of the time. Returning, he took 

 and "utterly destroyed the city," and not 

 only it, but the canal system on which its 

 prosperity depended ; and so it remains to this 

 day, sown with salt. Farther south lie the 

 ruin-covered tracts of Tarakun and Sarotar, now 

 a still more hideous desert, for the river has 

 turned its back and left them. 



Lunch in the shadow of a ruined archway, 

 and then, as the Persians say, we "fall" on our 

 road, which here lies amid wind-driven burkhans, 

 those crescent -shaped dunes, which advancing in 

 procession under the pressure of the Seistan 

 wind, in turn lay bare and engulf everything 

 that lies in their path. Year by year the 

 inhabitants of many a village are forced to 

 shift elsewhere. Such a one we passed that 

 morning, making its last stand with barricades 

 of tamarisks against the encroaching foe. 



