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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.

More especially is this the case in the neighborhood of the city of Kabul, which is perhaps the Caspatyrus of Herodotus, where Darius built the fleet which descended the Indus. South of Aria and Gandaria, in the tract between the Great Desert and the Indus valley, the plateau was occupied by four nations the Thamanseans, the Sarangians, the Sattagydians, and the Arachotians.

To the latter people Herodotus seems to assign almost the whole of the sandy region, since he unites them with the Sarangians and Thamanseans on the one hand, with the Utians and Mycians upon the other. They were a wild race, probably of Arian origin, who hunted with the lasso over the great desert mounted on horses, and could bring into the field a force of eight or ten thousand men.

The tract in question, which at the present day is divided between Afghanistan, Beloochistan, and Iran, contained, at the time when the Persian Empire arose, the following nations: the Sagartians, the Cossseans, the Parthians, the Hariva or Arians, the Gandarians, the Sattagydians, the Arachotians, the Thamanseans, the Sarangae, and the Paricanians.