A Journey to the Valley of the Assassins
to die long whale's back of the ridge; and looked on the
Alamut country below.
This is a great moment, when you see, however distant,
the goal of your wandering. The thing which has been
living in your imagination suddenly becomes a part of the
tangible world. It matters not how many ranges, rivers
or parching dusty ways may lie between you: it is yours
now for ever. So did those old Barbarians feel who first
from the Alpine wall looked down upon the Lombard
plain, and saw Verona and its towers and the white river
bed below them: so did Xenophon and Cortez, and every
adventurer and pilgrim, however humble, before them or
after: and so did I as I looked over that wide country,
intersected by red and black ranges, while the group of
hillmen around me, delighted with my delight, pointed
out the way to the Rock in a pale green cleft made small
by distance far below.
There was the Assassins' valley, tilted north-eastward:
before it, among lower ridges, the Shah Rud showed a
gleaming bend. Beyond and higher than all, uplifted as
an altar with black ridges rising to it through snowfields,
Takht-i-Suleiman, Solomon's Throne, looked like a throne
indeed in the great circle of its lesser peers. Its white drapery
shone with the starched and flattened look of melting snow
in the distance. The black rock arms of the chair were
sharp against the sky.
Below it and nearer, but still above the snowline, were
the passes: the Salambar where we hoped to travel, and the
Syalan still blocked with snow. The Elburz summits were
hidden by their own range on which we stood, but one
could see the general trend of the land from the uninhabited
region of the north-east, descending on either side of the
Alamut valley, which it enclosed in steep slopes, until it
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