The Hidden Treasure
need for solitude: hence a decline in religion, in poetry, in all
the deeper affections of the spirit: a disease to be doing something
always, as if one could never sit quiedy and let the puppet show
unroll itself before one: an inability to lose oneself in mystery
and wonder while, like a wave lifting us into new seas, the
history of the world develops around us. I was thinking these
thoughts when Husein, out of breath and beating the grey
mare for all he was worth with the plaited rein, came up
behind me, and asked how I could bear to go on alone for
over an hour, with everyone anxious behind me.
Husein dismounted so that I might ride, and walked ahead
with the muscles rippling under his brown calves and the
ancient remains of a pair ofgivas sticking here and there to his
feet. The two valley paths met, and went over a low neck of
limestone which enjoys the significant name of Jelau Geringe,
or the " advanced point where one is captured ": it used to
be well known for robbers before the present days of peace.
Here the Chu'bid, a small stream, meanders down a sunken
gully from Walantar, now hanging high above us. It runs
into Garau, which starts here as the Ab Bank and runs a
hidden course among trees from its low watershed. The
trees hid the landscape. Except for the absence of under-
growth, we might have been riding through English woods:
but the clear spaces with only rocks to variegate them gave a
rather poor and barren look, and accounted, I imagine, for
the absence of animal life; only a jay here and there, or a wild
pigeon flew from tree to tree.
Two parties met us, riding the other way: the first, another
squad of riflemen, was going down to join the tax-gatherers,
and was evidently already aware of the fact of my existence
from gossip at Husainabad. The other were strangers, also
riding from the capital into these outer fastnesses, with an
air of fashion conferred by the Pahlevi hat: they looked at me,
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