[No. 3, 
176 R. Burn —The BuJchtiari Hills. 
tobacco. We got some dried figs pressed into a ball. They are small, 
but of fine flavour. 
November 9th. Our march lay by the side of a small stream we 
had traced from its source. We saw a dead snake nearly 3' long soon 
after starting, and on the road passed many pomegranate orchards with 
the marks of Iliafc encampments, and saw several parties on their way to 
the lower plains. After about ten miles we turned suddenly to the south¬ 
west and crossing a steep ridge a few hundred feet high we came upon 
the Karun which is here a very swift deep river 60' to 80' wide flowing 
between high rocky banks. The mules were unloaded, while the boat 
on which we and our belongings were to be ferried across was prepared. 
It consisted of a kind of lattice of boughs, about 8' square, under which 
thirteen inflated goatskins were tied. A small boy with a bough five 
feet long with a piece of wood about half the size of the top of a 
bandbox tied across the end, sat on the front and paddled hard. The 
stream swept it rapidly down, but we got into a back eddy and landed 
safely, the mules being simply driven into the water and haviug to 
swim across. Our halting place, Guda-i-Balutak 1 is close to the other 
bank, and we got a room without difficulty. From Dupulan to this 
place the huts are of the same description. One wall is the rock of 
the hill side, the others being loose stones piled up, and roughly 
plastered on the inside, while the roof is made of branches of trees, 
barked but not shaped and covered with plaster, small stones and earth, 
so that from outside it looks like the ordinary ground. In a large room 
there may be one or two pieces of tree trunks as pillars. The houses 
are in terraces, so that the roof of one row serves as the cattleyard 
of the one above. 
November 10th. The road lay north-west through the dry bed of a 
river reminding one of the two kotals, the Plrzan and the Dukhtar on 
the road between Bushlr and Shiraz. After a few miles we reached 
a sort of ridge connecting the hills on either side. From the top we 
saw a rather narrow valley with low hills on either side, and plunging 
into it, found the descent rough, especially at the end, where we came 
on two gorges branching north-west and north-by-east, there being 
a ruined fort called the Qil‘a-i-Madar-i-Shak, the usual halting place at 
the junction. We marched along the north-west gorge seeing numbers 
of partridges in the ravines running down to it. After a mile or two 
we turned west and came upon the wonderful causeway called the 
Jadda-i-Atabak, about which so much controversy has taken place. 8 It is 
1 = The kernel of the acorn. 
2 Ibn Batuta trans. by Rev. S. Lee, pp. 37, 38. Curzon, Persia II, p. 288. De 
Bode, Travels in Luristan and Arabistan II, pp. 7-12. 
