Antiquity of Kalar

still take off for Daku and the jungle. Owing to my having
no books of reference with me I neglected Pishembur, and
merely looked at it across the plain instead of going to investi-
gate: but the fact remains that, if the king's causeway came
so far inland over hilly country instead of sticking to the easy
coastline, there must have been something of sufficient import-
ance in the plain of Kalar to justify the extra trouble. Shah
Abbas probably built his causeway on the line of the old track
which ran from Amul (the capital of the plain) to Ruyan (the
mountain capital), and thence by Banafshe (which still exists
under the name of Banafshade just below Bashm), to Kalar and
on into Daylam.

Apart from statistics, however, there is a remarkable feeling
of old and prosperous civilization in the plain of Kalar Dasht.
The buildings especially make one think that the people there
are still doing in an incomplete way what once they knew how
to do much better. The stucco ornaments and careful ceil-
ings and pleasant wooden porticoes all speak of a " decayed
gentility"; and before I left Lahu, a woman brought me
a piece of blue lustre tile, thirteenth century or so, which
she had found by the mound, but which — as she thought it
worth its weight in gold — I was unable to buy,

Our hosts were of the poorer sort, and our coming to their
house was no end of an event. No sooner had we reached it
than the younger woman volunteered to show me the view
south of the village, where the Dakulad comes out of a forest
bay, as it were, into the plain: this was merely so as to show me
off to the inhabitants, as I soon discovered, for after wandering
a long way through the ups and downs of Lahu — which is
another lovely community half buried in dim shade— when we
finally reached the last house and looked over open country
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