GEOLOGICAL DIVISION'S. 2lt 



of vegetation except in the immediate vicinity of the shore line. Along 

 its western shores some stream-beds terminate amongst shallow 

 marshes of stagnant water and mud banks covered with decayed reeds> 

 but none of this water reaches the absolutely dry plain of the " Hamuli, '* 

 which only takes the appearance of a lake when the mirage floats 

 over its surface creating a fantastic geography of lowlying promon- 

 tories and groups of scattered islands. These islands are small hills 

 of ancient volcanic rocks and limestones of the " flysch " period 

 surrounded on all sides by the pale yellow silt ; but a very remark- 

 able feature presented by them is that their slopes exhibit some- 

 times almost up to the very summit patches, more or less washed 

 down by occasional showers of rain, of the very same buff-coloured 

 mud which covers the floor of the dried-up lake. It is impossible 

 that this mud should have been derived from the weathering of 

 these low mounds of ancient lava, which are too small to allow of 

 any such differentiation of the products of weathering. The only 

 products of denudation derived from them are angular pebbles, dark 

 coloured like the hills themselves on whose slopes they lay scat- 

 tered. On the hills called Kaftani, near the south-western shore oc 

 the " Hamun," the lower portion of these mud deposits though ravined 

 by the rain still presents a terraced outline, and denudation has 

 exposed sections in which strings of angular pebbles from the tuffs 

 of the hill rest upon strata of the buff-coloured mud. It is quite 

 evident that this mud washed down in former times by rivers was 

 deposited in the still water of a lake, just as the deposit of the same 

 nature which covers its dried-up floor. Moreover, as they are found 

 at all heights along the slopes of the hill, it shows that these were at 

 that time entirely submerged ; further, that a large sheet of water 

 then existed whose surface rose to a height fifty feet or more above 

 the floor of the dried-up lake, and that the Lora-Hamun covered a 

 surface three or four times as extensive as the plain which now 

 bears that name. 



When speaking of the (( fan-taluses " under the heading of 

 hydrography, it was mentioned how the watercourses at the present 

 D • ( 33 ) 



