Wildfowl in Seistan 63 



also that the lake-dwellers, in their queer-shaped 

 craft, are in requisition as ferrymen across sub- 

 merged tracts and flooded rivers. In every direc- 

 tion alarms of water and inundations. You ride 

 out and find horizons of water where previously 

 was dry land. Everywhere one comes across 

 black lines of men, half naked, and plying 

 their mattocks as no one but Seistanis can, in 

 the erection of dams and lines of protecting 

 earthworks. 



In the summer Seistan is an inferno, where a 

 tropical sun and the blast of the "hundred and 

 twenty days wind" strive for mastery; while 

 Beelzebub and his horde of bloodsucking flies, 

 exhaled from the marshes, hum a chorus louder 

 or fainter according as one or other prevails. We 

 will not dwell on that. 



In autumn the water in rivers and lake has 

 become clear ; there are breaths of coolness in the 

 north wind, while the dark-green of the reed-beds 

 changes to browns and yellows. It is then, in the 

 silence of moonlit nights, you begin to hear the 

 silken rustle of pinions high up in the air, while by 

 day you mark in the sky those lines and V's and 

 zigzags and ever- changing curves that make the 

 flight of wildfowl one of the most beautiful sights 

 in nature. Then you know that day by day and 

 night by night the lonely meres and marshes are 



