The Hidden Treasure
from the south and east, Sagwand and the other tribes of
Lakistan. A little to our right across the Saidmarreh, black as
ink in the sunlight, on the way from Shirwan to Tarhan,
another defile came down to the water, Tang-i-Berinjan,
which wise travellers avoided, since robbers had ensconced
themselves in it for some time. These sleeping monstrous
hills, this inhuman emptiness and silence were full of awe: a
kingfisher down by the water, and the figures of my com-
panions as they climbed about the rocks in their cotton shoes
and medieval tunics, seemed strangely peaceful in the lawless
land. And then we turned back again into the shadow of
the defile, and reached die Dusani tents for lunch.
The City of the Larti
The Dusanis, when we left them, promised to hunt for
antiques as busily as they could during our absence. We, on
our side, engaged ourselves to return that way, and started
in the afternoon heat, southward for the lands of the
Beni Parwar. This is an agricultural tribe which in-
habits the broad trough, something between a valley and a
plain, north of the Kebir Kuh. The land was smiling and
prosperous, a rolling stretch of plough, then brown in autumn,
but with the pleasant homeliness of man's labour printed
upon it. We dipped down to it gently, over a low col which
finishes the range of Siah Pir. The river and its fierce and
lonely banks were out of sight, flowing away from us south-
eastward; all we saw were easy curves striped by fine lines of
ploughing, rolling up to the forested black outworks of the
Great Mountain, which continued against the skyline its long
unbroken wall.
The outwork was a separate range, parallel but lower, so
that in section the two would look like the descending graph
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