The Throne of Solomon
life, unchanging, centuries old and forgotten, held our pilgrim
souls in its peace.
Here in the moonlight shadow of the mountain itself, I
heard the legend of King Solomon and his Throne; and an
alternative version which has it that the prophet, burdened
with more wives than even he could stand, sent there for a
different one every night, and left her in the morning, frozen
to death by the mountain air. The men of Shahristan sat
round me in a circle, smoking their long straight pipes and
twinkling slowly over the thought of how King Solomon
managed his wives; bits of wood and iron nails from his bed
still lay scattered, they told me, on the mountain-top. But
when it came to a closer .enquiry, none, it appeared, had ever
been up there except a hairy old. mountaineer with wrinkled
face, the village shikari for ibex, who seemed loath to describe
the matter in detail, but said he would take us up either to
the summit or to the pass below it.
"We decided first to go up the little valley where the warm
stream gushes out that was made for the Queen of Sheba, and
whither people still ride a three or four days' journey from all
the lands around to be healed. And from there we would
climb the walls of the Throne, and perhaps its very summit,
but at any rate we would cross its great buttress and make our
way into an engagingly blank bit of country on its eastern side.
This great buttress wall runs unbroken and only dipping
slightly from the Throne itself to a pass above the Seh Hizar
which leads to Daku in the jungle, and between these two
points there is only one high col a little north of the mountain,
which is possible though difficult for mules. "Aziz and The
Refuge of Allah denied its existence, having no wish to go east
of their own country; but one is not bred in hills for nothing,
and die shikari disclosed the pass of Kalau just where I ex-
pected to find it. Here, then, after our visit to the watering
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