IO2 By Mountain, Lake, and Plain 



it was eerie to see that corpse of a city shining 

 white in the light of the moon. The silence of 

 the desert was almost oppressive. Suddenly it 

 was broken by a horrible cry, which at intervals 

 was repeated. One could well believe that amid 

 those dreary arches and caverns, the gul-i-biaban, 

 these ghouls of the desert, dreaded by travellers, 

 had their tenements. It was but a kaftar, a 

 solitary hyena, that disturbed the night with 

 his evil voice, a gruesome enough beast too, 

 according to Persian beliefs. 1 The place in fact 

 was such as the prophet described " wild beasts 

 of the desert shall lie there ; and thy houses shall 

 be full of doleful creatures ; and owls shall dwell 

 there, and satyrs shall dance there." 



Eound about these ruins gazelle wander, and 

 the whole plain from this point to the range to 

 the west has a right, if any place has, to the 



1 General Schindler thus quotes a Persian author in his * Eastern 

 Irak ' : " The hyena is a deceitful beast, for it affects to be weak 

 and feeble ; but when other beasts come within its reach it pounces 

 upon them and devours them. At night-time it is very strong ; 

 in daytime it is weaker. It is a hermaphrodite in this way that 

 it is a female one year and male the other. It loves the wolf, but 

 hates the dog. Its influence on the dog is such that if a dog be 

 going along the top of a hill when the moon shines, and its shadow, 

 by any chance, fall upon a hyena at the foot of the hill, it either 

 immediately dies or throws itself into the jaws of the hyena. It 

 breeds with the wolf, and the progeny of a male hyena and a she- 

 wolf is a sim. It is excessively cowardly and a most greedy beast, 

 being afraid even of locusts." 



