CLIMATE AND HISTORY. 3O3 
after mile was carefully terraced, while here and there were mounds littered with 
pottery. War, no doubt, has had much to do with it, but even more probably ruth- 
less deforestation in this and adjacent districts had decreased the rainfall, after which 
the springs dried up and the population was driven away." 
Holdich, speaking of the swamp of Mashkel, which lies in the same part of 
Baluchistan, but a hundred miles nearer to Sistan, remarks : 
Tliis extraordinary abundance of water locally is difficult to explain. It appears to be a survival 
of a far more extended condition of water-supply in southern Baluchistan than now exists. There 
is widespread evidence of former cultivation by an elaborate system of irrigation in so many parts 
of southern Baluchistan, where it is vain to hope that such cultivation will ever exist again, that it 
seems as if some mighty change must have come over the land thus to render so much of it water- 
less. It may be due to forest denudation and cessaition of rainfall, but, more likely, it is due to the 
gradual exhaustion of those subterranean sources which seem to be still prevalent in more north- 
ern districts. 
In speaking of the mountains of Kharan, 100 or 200 miles east of Mashkel, in the 
center of northern Baluchistan, Vredenburg (p. 2 13) comes to a similar conclusion : 
In all the valleys round Zara there are to be seen hundreds of s.tone walls which are called 
" gorband," or " dams of the infidels." Sometimes they stretch right across the flat, pebbly floors of 
the great valleys, which, for want of a better name, are termed " rivers." They also occur across 
the entrance to most of the tributary ravines and at various heights above the main valley. The 
country is quite uninhabitable for want of water, and yet there is no doubt about the nature of these 
walls, which are similar to works erected to the present day in many regions of Baluchistan and 
Persia, being, in fact, nothing but terraced fields. In many cases they still hold back the soil, for- 
merly cultivated, which has been heaped up against them. . . . The absence of any canals, the 
great height to which the walls are found up the tributary ravines, show that the fields were not 
watered by means of some general scheme of irrigation with canals deriving their supply from some 
reservoirs placed at a greater altitude. Perennial springs, now everywhere dried up, must have 
existed in all the ravines where these remains are found, which shows how much greater the rain- 
fall must have been formerly. 
From the evidence of certain tombs Vredenburg thinks that the fields were in 
use even down to Mohammedan times. 
Alexander's march. 
The march of Alexander from Mesopotamia across Persia to Samarkand and 
the Jaxartes River, and thence via Bactria to India and back through Baluchistan 
to Persepolis and Babj'lou, is justly regarded as one of the most remarkable feats in 
histor}'. There have been innumerable discussions of the subject, and the general 
tendeucy, especially of those writers who have actually traversed the more remote 
routes followed by the conquerer, is to think that under present conditions the 
march would have been impossible. This is not the place to discuss the whole 
question, but a few remarks tipon the portion of the journey nearest Sistan mav not 
be out of place. When Alexander left India he divided his army of 1 10,000 men 
into two parts, one of which, including the elephants, the invalids, and the heavy 
baggage, was put under the command of Krateros, and followed a route through 
southern Afghanistan and Sistan. Alexander himself, as Sykes says (p. 169), "faced 
the horrors of the desert by the route along the coast of Baluchistan in order to 
suppl)' his fleet by means of his army," although Arrian says it was because of his 
wish to rival the journeys of Scmiramis and Cyrus along the same road to India. 
