The Throne of Solomon
uninhabited, but visited by haymakers and shepherds, and
with a hut of boughs where a hermit lives in its midst.
The water ran brown and white over rocks, and a strange
crimson poppy grew in the boulders of its bed. We crossed
and recrossed, while our valley, embracing the western peak of
Solomon as with an arm, held on in a single groove with only
one small tributary from the west. It was open and cheerful,
treeless and inclined to pasture where the mountain did not
press in buttresses and towers down to the water's edge. The
western slope was gentler; a limestone ridge lay white against
the sky, and thorn trees, well grown and spaced as in a park,
showed on a nearer ridge against it. We left the torrent at
last, and looked down on it in a canyon below, where it
dropped in blue pools like a necklace of sapphires in the sun.
And turning a corner, two hours from Darijan, we saw our
watering resort before us.
Even at Balarud, and farther^off still in the Shah Rud valley,
I had heard of this place as a populous centre for people from
all parts of the country, a sort of Karlsbad of the mountain: and
though I have learned to doubt Persian description in general,
I had not expected quite such an Alpine solitude as we
now looked down upon. The river ran through its stony
valley with not a tree to shade it; and, close above it on the
slope, were two small caves fronted by a tiny enclosure of
loose stones, and showing by discoloured yellow streaks which
oozed from them down the face of the rock that here were the
mineral springs.
Perhaps a dozen people, men and women, were in the valley,
sitting on boulders while their mules wandered at will up the
hillside, a row of small bells arranged, most inconveniendy,
one would think, round their hindquarters, so that they can be
heard at night as they roam untethered near their sleeping
muleteers. On the flat ground near the river bed a few large
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