Castle of Nevisar Shah
the sunlit valley and Marco Polo's mountain of Skirkuh
in the distance.
As I climbed, I saw a gleam of blue glaze among the
stones, and picked up a shard of the selfsame pottery we
had found at the Rock of Alamut two days before.
Thirteenth-century pottery in this deserted place, 3,000
feet above the nearest habitation! I seized on it as a proof
required; for here without doubt must be Marco Polo's
casde, at the entrance of the valley as he describes it. We
hunted among the stones, and found more and more broken
bits all corresponding to the early samples of Qasir Khan,
and blessed the destructiveness of Assassin housemaids long
ago.
There is nothing left of the buildings except a bit of wall
here and there; a piece of the keep still upright with a loop-
hole on the highest point; and masses of debris of masonry
over all the top of the crest, which is a good-sized place and
must have contained a little hamlet as well as the casde itself.
On every side the natural walls fall away in precipices; and
from the highest point, 10,000 feet at least, for my aneroid
could rise no further, one can see the great half-circle of the
eastern mountains covered with snow, nameless on my map.
People who know nothing about these things will tell
you that there is no addition of pleasure in having a land-
scape to yourself. But this is not true. It is a pleasure
exclusive, unreasoning, and real: it has some of the quality
and some of the intensity of love: it is a secret shared: a
communion which an intruder desecrates: and to go to the
lonely and majestic places of the world for poor motives,
to turn them to cheap advertisement or flashy journalism,
jars like a spiritual form of prostitution on your true lover
of the hills. The solitary rapture must be disinterested. And
often it is stumbled upon unthinkingly by men whose