EXCURSION INTO PERSIA. 
51 
range b\- headwaters of the Atrek wliich finds its way westward through the 
mountains to the southern Caspian. On account of the lower level of the Persian 
than of the Turkestan drainage system at this point, one of the headwaters of the 
Atrek system is actively gnawing its way through the escarpment at the lowest 
part of the divide into the Chibin upland and capturing drainage from the 
headwaters of the Serani Valle\'. 
Fig. 28. — Two-mile profile of Terraces at Namali, looking east. 
After studying the view from the crest of the unsymmetrical divide, we 
descended by a zig-zag trail and hired permission to camp in a grassy apricot 
orchard, among irrigated fields on a narrow valley floor at an altitude of about 5,500 
feet. Above us was the village of Namali, a cluster of mud houses on the end of au 
interfluve. The village had seemed picturesque enough when first seen from the 
escarpment, but it appeared squalid and miserable on nearer approach. In the 
afternoon I ascended one of the interfluves for a review of the district. 
Like the Serani Valle\-, the Selsuparali basin shows signs of re\-ived erosion. 
The mature branching streams occup\' vallej-s 200 or 300 feet below the even- 
topped interfluves, whose fairly accordant levels indicate pretty clearly that the weak 
shales of the basin had been reduced to a peneplain before the \-alleys were eroded. 
There were, furthermore, faint signs of earlier cycles of erosion, not perceived at 
Serani or Firuza, and hardly worth recording here but for their confirmation farther 
east on the following day. 
The earliest cycle is indicated 
by the round-shouldered fonn 
of the Isferanli and Akh- 
kemar limestone anticlines 
on the south and southeast 
of the basin, where the cur\-ed 
surface over the crest trun- 
cates the strata, as if with 
reference to a baselevel of which there is no record preser\'ed in the less resistant 
shales. Certain benches on the mountain flank back of Namali appear to be 
remnants of graded spurs at an intermediate level. Then come the interfluves and 
the valleys of to-day, as shown in fig. 28. 
The broad synclinal basin of Selsuparali, between the Buuzan and the Isfer- 
anli anticlines, becomes narrower southeast of Namali, where the closely folded and 
serrate inclosing ranges may be named the Giluli and the Akh-keniar, after their 
chief peaks. On June 3 we followed the longitiidinal consequent Namali stream 
Fig. 23. — Two-mile section of Synclinal Valley, southeast of Namali. 
