The Throne of Solomon
walls across the river, and otherwise nothing hut rock and she
grass and grey water, with thorny bushes higher up for fu<
A man with a long-handled axe, and black hair, lank at the ba<
on his neck, turned up from nowhere to be a guide: we kei
him because of his pleasant smile, and he reappeared after s
interval with a cooking-pot and gun. An old trapper the
joined us, a shepherd from Kujur, a cousin, said he, of Ris
Shah, who came from that country. With a jolly manner, an
a staff over his shoulder, and the smallest of skull caps on h
head, he sat and asked me for medicines which would give hir
children, and talked about the trapping of animals in the hill
The evening cleared to a limpid sky with small clouc
floating: swallows flew under the cliff. The water made ft
pleasant noise, and so did our pilau, sizzling in the pot. Atn
as we sat there on the boulders, little groups of visitors cam
walking up to see us from Delir, talked of this and that i
their good-mannered way, and slowly worked round to th
subject of medicines, for which Teheran, a three days' ride
was their nearest source of supply. They had fine faces, mucl
lined and wrinkled, framed like fourteenth-century portrait
in their long hair: and the medieval likeness went further
than the mere external—it was the same life that created ;
recognizable type.
A touching couple came—two middle-aged people with £
small sick baby, dying obviously of starvation. The woman
carried the child, while the father had six eggs in a handkerchiel
as a fee, which he put down on the ground beside me with a
pathetic humility. All their children had died, and if this one
also died, said the woman, she would be too old to have an-
other: they had no doubt as to my being able to cure it, but
only as to my willingness in view of the insignificance of the
six eggs. I gave them a tin of Ovaltine, hoping for the best,
and filling them with a joy which wrung one's heart.