296 
THE BASIN OF EASTERN PERSIA AND SISTAN. 
is shown by the bUiffs (fig. 170). Wherever they are fronted by a beach they 
are extremely fresh, as though the waves had been at work on them btit yesterday. 
Their tops present a clean, sharp angle and are little dissected, and their slope is 
almost perpendicular. Yet the material of which they are composed is by no means 
resistant and contains many sandy or silty portions which are subject to rapid 
degradation. Moreover, the beach is also fresh and is not concealed by talus from 
above. Where the beach and the bluffs diverge the character of the latter at once 
changes. They become rounded and well dissected, a sloping body of talus lies at 
their base, and the cliffs slope so gently that thej- are covered with gravel and waste 
derived from the battered tops. The beaches and the fresh bluffs can not be old. 
The accuumlation of sand at the base of the latter is of very recent date. The large 
Fig. 170. — Lacustrine Bluffs and Recent Sand-dunes near Seh-Kuheh. View to the northeast. 
dune shown in the illustration (fig. 1 70) is said by the natives to have accumulated 
in three years. Under it are seen the cross-bedded remains of older dunes which 
have been repeatedly formed and swept away. Under the lowest of them, and rest- 
ing upon the old beach, I saw the ruined mud walls of an ancient garden. This is 
said to have belonged to a certain Rustum Khan, who died a hundred years ago. 
It is clear that the accumulation of the dunes is the work of a comparatively short 
time, probabh- not more than two or three hundred years. Moreover, it is probable 
that the accumulation of the dunes would begin within a relatively short time after 
the retirement of the water. Accordingly, from the recency of the sand-dunes and 
the freshness of the beach and bluffs, I am incliued to believe that the lake stood 
at the level of the Seh-Kuheh beach at a date which is to be measured in hundreds 
