The defile of tie Unbeliever?
step. The old way followed one of the ledges and was
very narrow; it finally melted altogether into the cliff-side,
but not before it had reached a spot where a few graves had
been opened, though nothing appeared to have been found
inside them. I gathered there was nothing very much left
to see of the Sassanian castle and relinquished the thought of
the precipice, though with some regret.
The Dusani promised to dig during our two days' absence:
and when we returned he had unearthed a cornelian bead and
a bit of stucco work, a slender piece of column moulded in a
pattern of overlaid leaves, and probably once intended to be
covered with metal, for it was made of very fragile " gatch."
Two broken daggers and three light spear-heads of bronze
were produced as having been found some time ago close to
the site at the bottom of the defile. These meagre results,
such as they were, fortified the supposition of some Sassanian
post in the valley, as the old legends implied.
We climbed down and followed the defile to where it
opens on the banks of the Saidmarreh, where rusty flanks of
hills lie one behind the other in the sun, like hippopotami
after drinking, ponderous in their folds. Opposite to where
we were sitting a little zig-zag showed the Sargatch Pass
and the way to Tarhan. The river wound between, a green
water, its sunken bed lined with tamarisk, kurf, and broom
and oleander. This is a warm valley, and the half-hour's
walk through the Unbelievers' Defile brings one from a
summer to a winter climate: in another month the Dusanis
from the west and the Tarhanis from the east would have their
black tents pitched in litde clumps for miles along these banks.
But now, except for the half-obliterated track and the opened
graves beside us, no sign of anything human was in all that
land. This country has been hardly explored and never
surveyed. The river banks are dangerous, open to raiders
[109]