Keepers of the Varazan Pass
ishtar. This letter was an "Open Sesame": its quite
significant contents were luckily sealed up, but the name on
e envelope had already served to get me through the
itanglements of the Nihavend police: its mere production
ive the impression that I travelled with the authority of
Dvernments behind me and when I handed it to anyone,
tried to cultivate a manner to correspond. I had another
tter to the brother of the Keeper of the Varazan, which
reduced more friendliness and promise of a night's lodging
i the plain of Khava below. The Ten sat in a row looking
t me: so did two menials who, they explained, came to do
he sweeping, though there was nothing to show for such
lomestic efforts among the rocks. As the caravans of tribes-
nen climbed up to the pass, one of our group would stroll
icross to waylay them and exact the toll: the small black
Dxen, scarce visible between enormous sacks of goatwool
filled with charcoal or grain, strayed on, surefooted, while
the men stood counting out the money and brought news of
the jungle or the town according as they came from south
or north. Their road lay like a ribbon far below us across
the plain of Khava whose southern edge, fringed with small
pointed hills and further wave-like ridges, vanished into a
gentle distance. Very few Europeans travel in this country.
Sir A. T. Wilson has been there, and perhaps half a dozen
more: and in 1836 Sir Henry Rawlinson marched his Persian
regiment across it, locating in his mind as he went the vanished
nations whose horses grazed over these open downs.
We parted from the garrison and proceeded with difficulty
owing to the jagged steepness of the southern slope, which is
scarce practicable for horses. The way from the pass runs
down a stony cleft. The whole range is like a wave whose
gentle slope we had been climbing from the Nihavend plain,
and we now had the sheer side to negotiate: and as we slipped
I'S]