They were hardy-looking people, but have repulsive features, and are very dark complexioned. Some of their young women we saw were fairer and comely, but the old dames were perfect hags, wrinkled and ragged. Their dress is of a coarse home-made cotton called karbás, and consists of a loose shift and trousers, the latter generally dyed blue. The wealth of these people consists in corn and cattle. The former is exported in large quantity across the desert to Núshkí and Kharán for the Balochistan markets.
Our camp at Sufár is close on the river bank. Throughout the march the country is covered with ruins, which exceed the present habitations in their number and extent.
From Sufár we marched fourteen miles to Banádir Jumá Khán, where we camped on the river bank. During the first half of the march our route was south-west away from the river, across a wide alluvial tract, which extends eight or ten miles southward before it rises up to the desert border, here forming a wide semi-circle of low undulations, very different from the high cliffs on either side of it. During the latter half of the march our route was west by south to the river bank.
At about five miles we came to the extensive ruins of Sultán Khwájah, in the midst of which stands a lofty fortress larger than that of Búst. On the opposite or right bank of the river, crowning the top of a prominent cliff, is a solitary commanding tower of red brick, now apparently deserted and in decay.
At five miles farther on we came to Banádir Tálú Khán, a poor collection of some hundred and fifty wattle-and-dab huts, in the midst of ruins of former habitations, and vineyards without vines. There are several of these banádir (plural of the Arabic bandar, a port or market-town) on this part of the river, each distinguished by the name of its presiding chief or that of its founder.
There is considerably less cultivation in this part of the country, and a large portion of the surface is a saline waste covered with camel-thorn and saltworts. The irrigation canals too are met at more distant intervals. The river bed here is fully a mile broad, and is occupied by long island strips of tamarisk jangal, abounding in wild pig, hare, and partridge.
From our camp, looking due south across the banádir reach or bay of alluvium, we got a distant view of Harboh hill in the sandy desert. It has a good spring of water, and is on the caravan route from Núshkí to Rúdbár. Straight to our front, or nearly due west, is the Khanishín hill or Koh Landi, so named from the villages on either side of its isolated mass.
So far we have had fine sunny weather since leaving Búst, and the air has been delightfully mild and fresh. The crops are everywhere sprouting, and give the country a green look. But the absence of trees (except the small clumps round distant ziárats, and the jangal in the river bed), and the vast number of ruins, tell of neglect and bygone prosperity, and are the silent witnesses to centuries of anarchy and oppression, that have converted a fertile garden into a comparatively desert waste.
24th February.—Banádir Jumá Khán to Landi Isháczai, fourteen miles. The country is much the same as that traversed before, but the desert cliffs rapidly approach the river, and considerably narrow the width of the alluvium on its left bank, and finally slope off to the high sandy ridge that, projecting from Koh Khanishín, abuts upon the river in lofty perpendicular cliffs, and turns its course to the north-west.