The Throne of Solomon

Before we reached the point where this insoluble problem
would have to be tackled, our minds were distracted by the
arrival, panting behind us, of the Hungarian-Greek lady's
deaf village maid, who handed me a note, evidently compiled
after a heart-to-heart scene with the engineer, asking apolo-
getically for the sheepskin that had been forced upon me the
day before, and suggesting that her husband would like to see
my maps.

This was impossible, for our faces were turned eastward and
not to Darijan; and having signified as much to the deaf one
by signs, we watched and waited while she descended to a
spring near the river's edge, and brought up her mistress's
and our water-botdes filled with a sparkling delicious mineral
water which the Municipal Laboratoire in Paris declares in
printed French and Persian to contain the following ingredients
per litre:

Silice
gr. 0-0275

Albuine
„ 0*0002

Oxide ferr.
„ 0*00628

A Fetat de bicarbonate
Soude Chaux Magnesie
„ O'l84 „ 0-5064 „ 0-985

Potasse
„ 0'926

Chlore
„ 0-1204

Acide sulf.
„ O-I2OI

This spring of water goes by the name of Shelef, and is
known at Khurramabad on the coast, but is at present too
inaccessible to be exploited.
We now stood on an edge and looked along the desolate
valley to the peak of the Throne of Solomon. The massif we
had been skirting ever since we left our camping-place at Ab-i-
Garm was the most western of the three summits of which
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