The Throne of Solomon
along die hillside, built, they say, by Malik Shah, the Seljuk
We were on the line of the higher track, which runs along thes<
solitudes from the Asalek Pass east of us, through empty pas-
tures to Kochire at the head of the valley of that name, and
probably much farther along, from village to village.
Such as it was, the Maiden's Castle had the inestimable ad-
vantage over many antiquities of being above and not under
the ground. Only the real expert has eyes to see as in a vision
what is buried: for the rest of us, the dust of great persons'
graves is speechless.
" King Pandion, he is dead,
All his friends are lapped in lead.*'
One likes to have a visible peg or two on which to hang
one's imagining. And Dohtar Qal'a provided this in an emi-
nent degree, as journalists say, whatever that may mean. The
Shah Rud valley lay below it, far below, and the mass of
Takht-i-Suleiman rose on the other side across six ranges,
borne as a hero on the shoulders of the crowd, with spurs
and lesser ridges radiating outwards like spider's legs. He
alone had snow upon his sides. Around him, in diminishing
galaxies, were mountains. We saw the long cleft of the Hard
Rud water outlined in a spiky fin of rock, and Zarine Kuh
behind it, opposite us, above the grassy shoulders of the
Anguran Pass, where the caravan route runs by Dehdar.
No human building was visible in this solitude except the old
fort and a tea hut buried nearly to its roof in the hillside against
wind and snow. Here I slept shivering at a height of nearly
10,000 feet until The Refuge crept up in the coldest of
the night and spread his own carpet over my unconscious
body, while he lay on the hillside thorns in his shaular.
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