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Here the Thamanseans were adjoined upon by the Sarangians, who held the land about the lake in which the Helmend terminates the Seistan of Modern Persia. Seistan is mainly desert. One third of the surface of the soil is composed of moving sands, and the other two thirds of a compact sand, mixed with a little clay, but very rich in vegetable matter.
In my pocket is a general letter from the Governor-General of Khorassan to subordinate officials of the province, ordering them to render me any assistance I may require, and another from a prominent person in Meshed to his friend Heshmet-i-Molk, the Ameer of Kain and Governor of Seistan, a powerful and influential chief, with his seat of government at Beerjand.
In the Great Salt Desert, which extends from Kashan and Koum to the Deriah or "Sea" in which the Helmend terminates, and in the sandy desert of Seistan, which lies east and south-east of that lake, reaching from near Furrah to the Mekran mountains, plains of above a hundred miles in extent appear to occur, sometimes formed of loose sand, which the wind raises into waves like those of the sea, sometimes hard and gravelly, or of baked and indurated clay.
A mile or so off to the right we catch a glimpse, of some wild animal chasing a small herd of antelope. It looks quite a likely spot for tigers, and it is not at all unlikely that it may have been one, for, while not plentiful hereabout, Tigris Asiaticus occasionally makes his presence known in the patches of reed and jungle in Southern Afghanistan and Seistan.
And now in 1906 the plague had reached Seistan. From the roof of the house where I lived with some English officers, we could see the unfortunate people carrying out their dear ones to the grave. We could see them wash the bodies in a pool outside the walls, and then resume their sad procession.
The great empire must be knit together into a solid unity, and Babylon was to be its capital. Only in the west there was still an enormous gap to be conquered, the desert through which we have lately wandered on the way from Teheran through Tebbes and Seistan and Baluchistan.
After crossing the Hamun we had not more than a couple of hours' ride to the capital of Seistan, Nasretabad. Five months before us another guest had arrived, the plague; and just at the time the black angel of death was going about in search of victims.
The khan impresses upon these simple-minded, out-of-the-world people a due sense of my importance as the guest of his master, the Ameer of Seistan, and they skirmish around in the liveliest manner to provide what creature comforts their meagre resources are equal to.
Especially are they a terrible danger when hydrophobia rages among them, as the experiences of the last Boundary Commission in Seistan showed. A mad jackal sneaked into the camp one night and bit a sleeping man in the face. Within six weeks the man was dead. Others stole into the natives' huts and lay in ambush, waiting for an opportunity to bite.
Omitting the Caspian and the Aral, which lay upon its borders, there were contained within the Persian territories the following important basins: the Urumiyeh, Lake Van, and Lake Goutcha or Sivan in Armenia; Lakes Touz-Ghieul, Egerdir, Bey-Shehr, Chardak, Soghla, Buldur, Ghieul-Hissar, Iznik, Abullionte, Maniyas, and many others in Asia Minor; the Sabakhah, the Bahr-el-Melak, and the Lake of Antioch in Northern Syria; the Lake of Hems in the Coele-Syrian valley; the Damascus lakes, the Lake of Merom, the Sea of Tiberias, and the Dead Sea in Southern Syria and Palestine; Lake Moeris and the Natron lakes in Egypt; the Bahr-i-Nedjif in Babylonia; Lake Neyriz in Persia Proper; the Lake of Seistan in the Iranic Desert; and Lake Manchur in the In dus valley.
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