A Journey to the Valley of the Assassins
mother was a witch, and she changed him and his son into
a ram and a black dog, and they trotted out through the
gate unsuspected by the sentry and fled. Down there across
the river is a great rock cleft in two: they call it Kafir Kuh,
and that is where our lord 'Ali overtook them and cut
them down."
We had now left the bank, and, turning a corner, saw a
rich green basin before us where the villages lay among rice-
fields, overshadowed by the most beautiful walnut trees I
have ever seen. All here was fertile and fragrant: roses,
vines, and hawthorn grew in the tall hedges, and where the
rice-fields ended, the corn began. Water ran everywhere
in little channels which flooded the shallow plantations:
and the shadows were full of birds' voices.
But the people in these villages are sick with malaria, a
poor crowd compared with Qasir Khan or Garmrud
which stand too high for the rice to grow and are free of
mosquitoes. Quinine seemed to be unknown. Indeed,
except for sugar and tea and paraffin, and rice, of which the
home supply is inadequate, and which comes with the tea
from the Caspian, the Alamut valley seems to be sufficient
to itself.
In the next oasis, on which we descended from a narrow
and dangerous path of sloping shale above the river, we came
through the chief village of Zavarak, where there is a little
booth filled with European odds and ends, which are
gradually beginning to find their way among the home-made
things.
The valley was narrower now. A rocky wall, 3,000 feet
or more, ran along it on our left. On one of the pinnacles,
invisible to the naked eye, 'Aziz pointed out the castle of
Nevisar in front of us. On our right were narrow wooded
glens with the snows of Elburz at their head. The lane
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