The Throne of Solomon
beneath die pass of the Thousand Hollows, and has no villages
for a long day's journey, nor buildings of any kind except one
chaikhana hut below its meeting with Barir in a grassy flat space
called Vanderaban. A track runs by the water's edge, and as
many as a hundred people will pass along it from Kalar Dasht
or Talaghan in the day, for it is one of the thoroughfares of the
hills. We must have met about thirty, all in the morning
hours, who had slept in the woods and would make their
southern valley in the evening. They were mostly carrying
loads of charcoal, and greeted us, since Talaghan and Alamut
are neighbours and 'Aziz knew many of their homes.
Our river soon turned due north and little glens came into
it with water from the right. On the left also a glen came in,
waterless except in winter. After that, there were no side
valleys for hours: the blue dotted river of my map, which, if
anywhere, should have appeared somewhere about here from
the left, proved to be a mere work of fancy, as we had con-
cluded before.
This most beautiful of valleys is in die jungle. Through
glades and leafy waves, reddish mountains break into it like
hulls of ships, high in the sky. The trees—thorn, beech, ash,
sycamore, " divar," medlar, pear—spread there as in a park,
great in height and girth; and the river stumbles over their
roots in shining eddies. Over all is a virgin sense of freedom, a
solitary joyousness, a gende bustle made by stream and sun-
light and the warm light wind, independent of the life of man.
Herds of humped black catde inhabit the valley in summer.
The herdsman's boy, a light-haired Gilaki lad with small
features, fair skin, and beautifully shaped Nordic head, ap-
peared out of the seemingly uninhabited solitude to look at us
as we lunched under a thorn tree. In his hand he carried a
hatchet engraved with a running scroll from Khurramabad on
the coast. It is a remarkable fact that the people who do
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