Ahu- Gardani i o i 



an assistant moves the quarry up within rifle-shot ; 

 but it is not quite so easy as this bare description 

 might lead one to suppose. Indeed, far more 

 often than not, gazelle on the plains of Eastern 

 Persia leave but a bare remembrance of a flicker 

 of white in the hazy distance ; then they are 

 gone. 



Let me say something to start with about the 

 terrain. If you travel south from Seistan along 

 the camel track that eventually leads to India, 

 after all cultivation has been left behind, there 

 rises on the straight line of desert something that 

 looks like a city. A city it is, but of the dead. 

 Scattered over the plain are crumbling remnants 

 of citadels, towers, tanks, and gateways, while 

 other buildings are but amorphous excrescences 

 on the ground. Amongst the best preserved 

 is a square fort, called Kila-i-Kustam, full of 

 buildings that under the blast of the sand-laden 

 winds have now their outlines rounded in a way 

 that reminds one of a child's fort on the sand, 

 when washed by the incoming tide. In the desert 

 a few miles distant, Seistanis point out the akhor- 

 i-Rustam, Kustam's stable, and you will be shown 

 two ruins a hundred yards or so apart, which 

 mark the site of the head and heel-ropes of his 

 magic and gigantic horse Kaksh. 



I once had a camp near this spot, and at night 



