A Journey to the Valley of the Assassins
two and closes the valley of the Assassins as with a wall.
It is, I believe, one of the " mountains " which Marco Polo
mentions in his reference to the Assassins' home.
The entrance to the valley is so well hidden that Dr.
Eccles and his party who came before me, did not notice it
and had to wade upstream. But 'Aziz knew the ancient
way, and we climbed from boulder to boulder over the
face of the cliff up a path evidently used and neglected by
many generations, the sort of path that in the Alps makes
short cuts above and below the new road that has super-
seded it, and still retains a sort of dilapidated solidity from
earlier days.
After an hour's climb it brought us out across the ridge
into the sunlight.
Far below, flat and arid at our feet, gleaming with inter-
laced streams, was the Alamut valley, and Badasht its first
oasis far ahead. Somewhere to the right a castle held the
entrance: but 'Aziz, whose education was only beginning,
said nothing about it, and took me past its dead sentinels
unchallenged, downwards among steep slabs of granite
where roses and jasmine and fragrant shrubs of many kinds
gave us the same pleasure as to those earlier travellers who
reported to Marco Polo seven centuries ago.
There is no cultivation in this first part of the valley, and
the waterless gullies of Rudbar come down on the left
nearly to the water's edge. Whatever ancient road there
may have been is long since washed away, and indeed the
valley road must always be carried down by floods here and
there. Even in its broader stony bed above the canyon,
the Alainut water lapped dangerously at the bridge below
Badasht in muddy waves and washed away the earth from
the flimsy poles which sagged in the middle.
The men got one mule over, but thought it safer to wade
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