EXAMPLES OF TERRACES. 
267 
a valley filling of gravel and are of small size. In many places they number but 
one, although farther north, around Turbat-i-Haideri, and among the mountains 
south of Meshed, two was the usual number. Most of the valleys in which the 
terraces were found drain either to the Heri Rud or to the Khaf playa, or at least 
belong to the systems of which the river and the playa are the final gathering- 
grounds. If the tributaries all reached the main streams it would be fair to infer 
that the diminutive terraces of the branches might be the reflection of the large 
terraces of the trunks, and were possibh' due to a cause acting at some distant 
point downstream. Inasmuch, however, as many of the branches never reach the 
trunks at any time, and as some of them are separated from the tnmks by ungraded 
stretches over which the influence of a downstream displacement would not be felt, 
it becomes almost necessary to refer these minor terraces to some local cause. If 
this is done, crustal movements are out of the question, since an impossible com- 
plexity and conformit)- with the minor surface features would be required. The 
only other possible explanation seems to be climatic change. 
THE TERRACES ON THE BORDERS OF THE DASHT-I-LUT. 
Along the borders of the Dasht-i-Lut, where the streams run with greater 
strength than they do among the gra\-el-clogged uplands, there is again a considera- 
ble development of terraces. In the valley of Haji Hussein Beg, a day's journey 
northwest of Birjand on the road 
to Tun, there are four good ter- 
races of the old familiar type, 
gravel, more or less cemented by 
calcite, above, and rock below 
(fig. 160). These terraces are 
highest along the steeper part of 
the stream's course, and die out 
as it approaches the smooth salt 
playa of Mehemetabad. There- 
fore they can not be due to any change in the playa whereby it became a lake. Indeed 
such a change would be impossible, since if the water of the playa rose ever so little 
it would overflow to the Dasht-i-Lut, and the playa could not be pennanenth- cov- 
ered with water unless the whole of Central Persia were converted into a vast lake. 
The terraces of Haji Hussein Beg may be due to warping which, for some peculiar 
reason, assumed such a form as to produce the same number and sort of terraces here 
in this detached locality which it had produced at approximately the same time in a 
score of other distant places. Or these terraces may be due to climatic changes, 
in which case their likeness to those of other regions is a necessary part of the theorj-. 
From Mehemetabad nearly to Bajistan, 35 miles north of Tun, there are no 
good series of terraces, and the scenery is much like that of the mountains to the 
east — gravel fans, buried mountains, and valleys with a single or occasionally a 
double terrace. At Bajistan three small valleys come together, each of which has 
one terrace cut in stratified gravel and brown silt. The town lies on what seems to 
be an older terrace, which has been half-buried by the later deposit of gravel, in 
Fig. 160. — Terraces in the Valley of Haji Hussein Beg in the 
Chahak Basin. 
