The Throne of Solomon
nothing for it but to put up the tent in a grassy corrie where a
few cows wandered round an empty hut, and to admire the
beauties of Nature while waiting for the shikari and his ibex.
Here we sat for a good many hours, in a place with grey
boulders in long grass, and Nepeta flowers and iris roots about.
'Aziz, stricken with remorse over the field-glasses, would
shout at intervals across the valley towards the unresponsive
mass of latim Kuh, amid whose black precipices the oblivious
shikari must, we presumed, be wandering.
As the afternoon advanced, action of some sort became im-
perative. To go up towards Kalau seemed better than to
descend in the mere hope of an invisible path in the valley,
and it would be easier to retrieve a mistake by retracing our
way downhill rather than up. So we climbed the first step
in the ascent of the barrier; and after an hour's struggle, so
steep that the mules took it in short scrambles, scattering
stones and pausing every few minutes in the obvious hope of
some mulish miracle to make us change our minds, we reached
another and larger corrie called Chertek, a great lap between
the knees of two hills, at the head of which our barrier still
towered higher than ever, red rock with a turret-like point
against the sky, deceptively near and clear in the high air.
At the far end of the corrie, showing its size by their small-
ness, were flocks of sheep browsing on the scree or standing
with their heads together in the sun. The Refuge and I
went to find the shepherd, and scattered as we walked crowds
of partridges with their young families, who ran about the
rocks calling their liquid cry.
The shepherd was far up the hill-side, but the Refuge of
Allah had no thought of toiling after him. The wayfarer in
Persia has every privilege; to direct him is no mere act of easy
courtesy: you leave whatever you may be doing to come when
he calls and tell him what he wants to know, however far off
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