GEOLOGICAL DIVISIONS. 2F5 



backs, from the desert to the south (such an act is regarded as 

 very sinful by the Baluch who consider manual labour degrading to 

 human dignity). It is more probable that the soil was carried on 

 the backs of beasts of burden rather than on that of men, but the 

 tradition is no doubt an echo of the immense amount of labour 

 which this work necessitated. At all events the greatness itself 

 of the undertaking shows that the returns of the work must have 

 made it worth the trouble which they took, and that what is now 

 a barren desert was once the home of a prosperous community. It 

 is certainly not improbable that these people might have been 

 originally the fire-worshippers, but I am inclined to think that simi- 

 lar works continued to be erected long after the first Mahomedan 

 settlements. In these same mountains of Kharan there are ancient 

 Mahomedan cemetries in which the tornbs and the wall surrounding 

 them are built exactly in the same manner as the walls of the 

 terraced fields, being made of roughly-shaped stones disposed in very 

 regular layers. Nowhere in Baluchistan could a work of that nature 

 be built at the present day, the modern graves are mere mounds of 

 earth clumsily decorated with boulders, or occasionally with pieces 

 of weathered travertine. The tombs just mentioned seem, on the 

 other hand, to be the work of the same hands that used to build the 

 terraced fields. I do not know enough of the history of the region 

 to assign any date to them, but the mere fact of their being Mahom- 

 edan shows at what a very recent date we must place the final 

 dessication of these mountains. 1 



This complete dessication of the district has allowed the de* 



velopment of the most characteristic feature of 



desert scenery, the accumulation of wind-borne 



sand. I have nothing to add to the descriptions which have been 



1 "From the accounts 'given by ancient writers, it appears highly probable that the 

 population of Persia was much greater, and the cultivated land far more extensive 2,000 years 

 ago than at present ; and this may have been due to the country being more fertile in conse- 

 quence of the rainfall being greater. Some alteration may be due to the extirpation of trees 

 and bushes, the consequent destruction of soil and increased evaporation; but this alone will 

 scarcely account for the change which has taken place." W. T. Blanford. Quart. Journ. 

 Geol. Soc, Vol. XXIX (1873), p. 500. 



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