The Pass of Siolis
The Pass of Siolis is not so difficult as the Kalau, though it is
nearly as high, and only open for the summer months of the
year. It is chiefly used for the transport of salt from the south,
while charcoal and heavier merchandise go round by the lower
and easier Anguran. From our camp at 8,000 feet it took us
five and a half hours to get up to the top, climbing steadily,
first through oak scrub, then in and out of rock with patches of
snow. I was still incapable of bearing the height, and rode
nearly all the way, with twinges of remorse on behalf of the
mules.
" The perfume of the hills seizes one's heart/* said 'Aziz,
who also hoisted himself on to a mule whenever I did so, with
no similar excuse. The Refuge of Allah had been bullied out
of his breakfast because I insisted on an early start, but walked
on without a sign of weakness, as steadfast as the landscape
around him: no work was ever too much for him. But as for
*Aziz, he carried my field-glasses and my stick, trying to look as
if they belonged to him, and limited himself in the matter of
work to a general amiability with passers-by.
This Siolis track was more beautiful than that of Kalau, for
below us on our right we had a wild, uninhabited valley run-
ning up to Lashkarek, a conical peak near the Thousand Hol-
lows Pass, and the black rocks of a mountain called Siaikulu
faced us like a castle rampart across the fosse of the valley.
And on our left were green tiers of corries of the valley of
Seven Springs, where the Chalus River begins in waterfalls.
We were refreshed on the way up by meeting mules with
panniers of small apples from Talaghan: but it was a weary
pull, and the pass itself a wearisome, sand-coloured distension,
leading one on and on towards an elusive skyline, one of those
passes that have a world of their own of small bumps and
hollows at the top. From the little height of Saraban, which
makes one of the horns of the pass, as it were, a beautiful high
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