But the horses are tired and hungry. They drag and stumble along in a most tiresome manner. There is moonlight, that ought to add poetry to the scenery—but in Persia there is no poetry about anything. There are a great many caravans on the road—they all travel at night to save the animals from the great heat of the day—long strings of camels with their monotonous bells, and dozens of donkeys or mules, some with the covered double litters—the kerjawa. These kerjawas are comfortable enough for people not accustomed to ride, or for women who can sleep comfortably while in motion inside the small panier. The kerjawa is slung over the saddle like two large hampers with a roof of bent bands of wood. A cloth covering is made to turn the kerjawa into a small private room, an exact duplicate of which is slung on the opposite side of the saddle. Two persons balancing each other are required by this double arrangement, or one person on one side and an equivalent quantity of luggage on the other so as to establish a complete balance—a most important point to consider if serious accidents are to be avoided.
Every now and then the sleepy voice of a caravan man calls out "Salameleko" to my coachman, and "Salameleko" is duly answered back; otherwise we rattle along at the speed of about four miles an hour, bumping terribly on the uneven road, and the diligence creaking in a most perplexing manner.
At Hasanabad, the second stage, I was more fortunate and got four good horses in exchange for the tired ones. One of them was very fresh and positively refused to go with the others. The driver, who was brutal, used his stock-whip very freely, with the result that the horse smashed part of the harness and bolted. The other three, of course, did the same, and the coachman was not able to hold them. We travelled some few hundred yards off the road at a considerable speed and with terrible bumping, the shaky, patched-up carriage gradually beginning to crumble to pieces. The boards of the front part fell apart, owing to the violent oscillations of the roof, and the roof itself showed evident signs of an approaching collapse. We were going down a steep incline, and I cannot say that I felt particularly happy until the horses were got under control again. I feared that all my photographic plates and cameras might get damaged if the diligence turned over.
While the men mended the harness I had a look at the scenery. The formation of the country was curious. There were what at first appeared to be hundreds of small mounds like ant-hills—round topped and greyish, or in patches of light brown, with yellow sand deposits exposed to the air on the surface. On getting nearer they appeared to be long flat-topped ridges evidently formed by water-borne matter—probably at the epoch when this was the sea or lake bottom.
"Khup es!" (It is all right!) said the coachman, inviting me to mount again—and in a sudden outburst of exuberant affection he embraced the naughty horse and kissed him fondly on the nose. The animal reciprocated the coachman's compliment by promptly kicking the front splashboard of the carriage to smithereens.
We crossed a bridge. To the east the water-level mark, made when this valley was under water, is plainly visible on the strata of gravel with reddish mud above, of which the hills are formed.
Then, rising gradually, the diligence goes over a low pass and along a flat plateau separating the first basin we have left behind from a second, more extensive, of similar formation. The hills in this second basin appear lower. To the S.S.E. is a horseshoe-shaped sand dune, much higher than anything we had so far encountered, and beyond it a range of mountains. Salt can be seen mixed with the pale-brownish mud of the soil.
Then we drive across a third basin, large and flat, with the scattered hills getting lower and seemingly worn by the action of weather. They are not so corrugated by water-formed channels as the previous ones we had passed. Twenty feet or so below the summit of the hills a white sediment of salt showed itself plainly.
The fourth basin is at a higher level than the others—some 100 feet or so above the third—and is absolutely flat, with dark, gravelly soil.
Azizawad village has no special attraction beyond the protecting wall that encloses it—like all villages of Persia—and the domed roofs of houses to which one begins to get reconciled. Next to it is the very handsome fruit garden of Khale-es-Sultan.