Wild Sheep in Khorassan 167 



moving forward of their own volition on the 

 same sacred errand. To those burning with 

 religious zeal, miraculous levitation is a far more 

 natural and credible theory than any such prosaic 

 explanation as pushes onward by the zealous 

 hands of numberless wayfarers. 



We soon left the main road, and passing by 

 a wonderful blue mosque in a grove of trees, 

 drove across the plain towards the hills. Some 

 twelve miles from Meshed, when the track be- 

 came too bad for wheels, we mounted our horses 

 that had preceded us there and rode on to a 

 camp pitched by the side of a rushing stream 

 in the shade of a row of poplars. Next 

 morning, after passing through a gorge with 

 limestone walls towering above us, we found 

 ourselves in a real hill country with romantic 

 fort villages and terraced fields. 



It is in this region that the long arm stretch- 

 ing southward that forms the eastern abutment 

 of the Persian plateau, takes off from the main 

 range, that huge wrinkle in the earth's surface, 

 of which Hindu Kush and Paropamisus, Elburz 

 and Caucasus, are but parts. As might be 

 expected, the country forming the angle is 

 a confused mass of tumbled, contorted ridges, 

 cloven by winding valleys; here a smiling, al- 

 most alpine country with green hillsides and 



