The Throne of Solomon
Zavarak took and razed the castle and returned to their inde-
pendence. They are, as may be imagined, staunch supporters
of the new regime.
They were all out now in the meadows, threshing and
winnowing—a scene of prosperity in Arcadia.
Here they lifted me down and laid me on fdtMazanderani
mats in a small room. They gave me glasses of tea, injected
more camphor, and threw a cloth over me to keep away the
flies, while the doctor chatted to the family and heard the
village news. After three hours or so, we started again.
"We climbed now southward, up the face of the Elburz
range, which here hangs out an immense terrace, running
parallel with the valley but about 1,000 feet above, and inter-
sected at more or less regular intervals by wide, deep, and
nearly perpendicular gullies. On this terrace are three villages,
Painrud, Balarud, Verkh, each cut off from its neighbours
by these gullies, each with the shoulders of Elburz behind it,
and with Alamut and all the eastern hills, even to the Throne
of Solomon himself supreme on the skyline, spread in a semi-
circle before it.
We climbed for one and a half hours, first zig-zagging up
the wall from the Alamut valley and then making at a gender
but still very steep gradient over the stubble-fields of the shelf,
till we reached Balarud, tilted towards the north among
fenced gardens, with a brook running through its scattered
houses, and every sort of fruit tree, walnut, cherry, apple, pear,
medlar, and poplars and willows, throwing shade upon it.
'Aziz, who had abandoned his affairs in his village of
Garmrud to attend to me, now spurred up his mule.
" Which house would you like?" said he.
I selected a high cottage with two rooms on the roof and
open spaces on three sides of it. 'Aziz went to turn out the
inhabitants.
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