VI
FROM PERSIA TO INDIA (1906)
Tebbes to Seistan
Now we can return to Tebbes and continue our journey to India.
The camels are laden, we mount, the bells ring again, and our caravan travels through the desert for days and weeks towards the south-east. At length we come to the shore of a large lake called the Hamun, which lies on the frontier between Persia and Afghanistan. The Amu-darya forms the boundary between Bukhara and Afghanistan, the northern half of which is occupied by the Hindu-kush mountains. The name means "slaughterer of Hindus," because Hindus who venture up among the mountains after the heat of India have every prospect of being frozen to death in the eternal snow. Large quantities of winter snow are melted in spring, and then rivers and streams pour through the valleys to collect on the plains of southern Afghanistan into a large river called the Hilmend, which flows into the Hamun. As there are no proper boats or ferries on the lake, we had here to take farewell of the camels who had served us so faithfully and had carried us and our belongings through such long stretches of desert. We were sorry to part with them, but there was nothing for it but to sell them to the only dealer who would take them off our hands.
Reeds and rushes grow in abundance along the flat shores of the Hamun, but no trees. The natives build their huts of reeds, and also a curious kind of boat. Handfuls of dry, yellow reeds of last year's growth are tied together into cigar-shaped bundles, and then a number of such bundles are bound together into a torpedo-like vessel several yards long. When laden this reed boat floats barely four inches above the water, but it can never be filled and made to sink by the waves. It is true that the bundles of reeds might be loosened and torn apart by a high sea, but the natives take good care not to go out in bad weather.
It took fourteen of these reed boats to accommodate our party and its belongings. A half-naked Persian stood at the stern of each boat and pushed the vessel along by means of a long pole, for the lake though twelve miles broad is only five or six feet deep. A fresh breeze skimmed the surface when we came out of the reeds into the open lake, and it was very refreshing after weeks of the dry oppressive heat of the desert.
MAP SHOWING JOURNEY FROM TEHERAN TO BALUCHISTAN
(pp. [46-54] and [72-81]).
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. He took the peasant from the plough and the shepherd from his flock; and the fisherman, who in the morning had gone cheerily to set his nets in the waters of the Hamun, in the evening lay groaning in his hut with a burning fever.