Old route to the Caspian
colony of bugs had invaded my mosquito net, almost the only
ones I came upon in Mazanderan.
So we left next morning. I sat in the porch of the little
mosque and waited for my mules. The Throne of Solomon
shone faintly, like a transparent flame in the white summer
sky. 'Aziz and his small son had gone ahead to prepare the
welcome in Garmrud, and Ismail was to take me across the
valley to see an old castle on our way.
" Do not forget me," said the doctor, as he came to see us
off. " We shall never meet again." He waved his hand
with my clock in it, which I had left as a legacy, and watched
us as we jingled down over the stubble.
Three Weddings
We climbed from our shelf down to the Alamut by Zavarak,
rested a minute at the house under the trees, and then made
straight up the other side of the valley towards a little village
called Ilan, where an Assassin tower was said to guard the way
from Syalan and the Caspian.
The tracks from the old stronghold of Alamut go by Atun
and flan, over many Sialan passes, down on to the Do and Seh
Hizar Rivers in the north. It is natural that there should have
been fortifications to overlook them, and it is not the existence
so much as the character of the ruin of lian that is unexpected.
The place is on the very top of an immense boulder about 100
feet high, and steep on every side as a " gendarme " in the
Alps. It is made of a sort of pudding stone, and has rolled
down in a desolate wilderness of rocks of the same kind where,
as one descends, one may think of Dante climbing from one
infernal circle to the other. In the overhanging pock-marked
cliffs wild bees have made their nests; I tried some of their
honey at the end of a stick, and thought it sweeter than any
honey I had ever tasted.