6 By Mountain, Lake, and Plain 



The wind of Seistan ! No one that has visited 

 the country can ever again think of it without 

 the consciousness that there the word " wind " 

 acquired for him a new significance. For much as 

 men receive new ideas about water after seeing an 

 ocean storm, so a residence in these parts reveals 

 new and unpleasant possibilities about air. There 

 is the hot bad -i- sad- o -hist roz, the "wind of a 

 hundred and twenty days," that howls through 

 the land during summer ; the freezing but shorter- 

 lived winds which rage in winter ; all from the 

 same point in the compass. 1 Local lore says the 

 latter, sometimes called shamshir or sword, 

 last for three, five, or seven days. Everywhere 

 in Seistan are evidences of the wind the wind 

 and man's struggle against it. Hollows scooped 



1 Some call it the wind of a hundred and thirty days. There is 

 a country north of Herat called Badghis, which may be freely 

 translated "the home of the winds," and local belief makes this 

 district the source of these blasts. The real cause is no doubt the 

 rush of cold air from the highlands of Afghanistan to replace the 

 hot air ascending from Persian deserts. The direction of the wind 

 is from a few points west of north in Seistan, but as you proceed 

 north, the wind shifts round east or north-east. The flow seems 

 curiously shallow, for the series of not very high ridges it meets 

 after pouring across the Tag-i-Namadi, causes it to be diverted 

 southward, so that the plains lying between the ranges of Kain get 

 less and less of the wind as you go westward. A curious phen- 

 omenon caused by these winds when very violent is that the 

 telegraph operators on the line that runs through Eastern Persia 

 receive severe shocks when at the instrument, due perhaps to 

 electrically charged matter being blown against the wire. 



