The " Refug of Allah '
living with, only more shy because of their more solitary life
and rarer dwelling in the social village centre, I do not know.
Nor could I, on this occasion, hope to solve their mystery: the
high summits and the malarial lowlands were alike beyond
my powers. I decided to follow the summer custom of the
country and keep to the Alpine pastures; and as the map seemed
to say so little about them, I thought I would examine at
leisure the rivers that descend from Solomon's Throne, and
finally, after following the Shah Rud to the engaging blank-
ness of its headwaters, drop over one of the passes on to the
Teheran road some hundred miles or so east of where I had
left it.
So I decided; and looked once more over the outspread
world from this, the highest point of my journey, before
turning regretfully back with The Refuge of Allah. He, too,
had climbed the little height. However tired (and he always
walked when we rode) he felt himself bound never to let me
wander up a hill unprotected, but would follow silently, carry-
ing the camera and glasses, and keeping at a sufficient distance
to prevent his iron nails and odds and ends from interfering
with my compass. When told he need not come, he would
merely answer: " To see the world is good," and would then
sit with his pipe, gazing unblinkingly over new lands, wearing
an air of serenity which economists might find hard to recon-
cile with an income of L.4 a year.
On the eastern side of the pass we found no iris but quantities
of Nepeta along the edge of a snowdrift down which we now
slid easily, and followed its muffled waters by a rocky valley
very different from the open face of our ascent. After two
hours the sun set. Far up his light still shone on yellowing
pastures above the cliffs which shut us in: a flock was grazing
there. The shikari, who knew this region, suddenly turned
left off the path, over rocks, to a semicircle of loose stones
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