34 



III. Ibex and Ibex Ground. 



"... those towers sublime, 

 That seemed above the grasp of time, 

 Were severed from the haunts of men 

 By a wide, deep, and wizard glen, 

 So fathomless, so full of gloom, 

 No eye could pierce the void between ; 

 It seemed a place where Gholes might come, 

 With their foul banquets from the tomb, 

 And in its caverns feed unseen." 



MOORE. 



A LONG arm of mountainous country stretches 

 southward down the eastern flank of Persia, till 

 it merges in the ranges of Baluchistan. North 

 of Seistan it is sometimes attenuated to a single 

 limestone ridge ; more often it is broken up into 

 several such ridges ; while in other parts it spreads 

 out in confused masses of hills with transverse 

 ranges. Here and there isolated knots stand apart 

 from the range like islands in a misty sea of 

 desert. Drainage - system there may be said to 



1 The Persian ibex is of course Capra cegragus. Some 

 naturalists have objected to its being called an ibex at all, on 

 what grounds I do not quite know. 



