288 TEAYEL, ADVENTURE, AXD SPOET. 



the great desert of Seistan, where the winds at a cer- 

 tain season are so hot and dry, that when a man's 

 body is exposed to them, the skin and veins will 

 crack iintil the blood pours out, and in a very short 

 time it becomes a mass of putrefaction. Xow, they 

 say that Allah made Beluchistan the most perfect 

 land on the face of the earth, a land where reigned 

 eternal spring or autumn (for if the Beluch who 

 speaks happens to be hungry, he says it was an 

 eternal time of date-ripening, whereas if he be satis- 

 fied, he sets it vaguely down as an eternal time of 

 tree-budding), and so lovely, that when the angels 

 ilew over it they were always in danger of forgetting 

 His commands; but that Iblis, enraged at such a 

 prospect of bliss for the favoured Beluches, tearing 

 up great ranges of mountains to the north, cast these 

 down upon the beautiful country, and, not content 

 with that, like a dog scraped down upon it with his 

 heels a good quarter of the desert of Seistan. Pro- 

 bably a philosophical German would find this story 

 to be a myth, arising from the ancient and still 

 continued bitter enmity between the Beluches and 

 Persians. But it suits the state of matters so ad- 

 mirably that the wise man will feel inclined to be- 

 lieve it when he hears it related by an excited native, 

 in some beautiful little valley green with grass, shaded 

 by graceful tamarind trees, refreshed by a clear per- 

 ennial stream, and lively with flocks of sheep and 

 goats, but sunk deep in a great range of red, barren, 



