'Through Persia on a side-saddle' [‎99] (130/360)

HERMAN AND ITS ENVIRONS
99
Mosaic was found everywhere, often in beautiful patterns,
in which blue, black, white, and soft fawn colours figured.
It reminded us of the description of Ahasuerus's palace at
Shushan, where the people feasted in the courtyard " upon
a pavement of red and blue and white and black marble "
(Esther i. 6).
Very little was found in the fortresses beyond mosaic
floors, a curious corroded pipe as big as a drain-pipe, some
coins, tiny agate and cornelian beads, and bits of cotton
manuscript paper, one recording a complaint of looting in
the Jabel Bariz district, dated some six hundred years ago.
After a while somewhat curious things were brought for
sale, among which a small Queen Victoria medal and a
torn sheet of one of my brother's Pioneer newspapers
were offered, both, according to their would-be salesman,
having been dug out of a fortress at a great depth below
the earth!
One day we came across the Necropolis of old Kerman.
The graves reminded us a little of the Catacombs, with a
difference, as long, square niches were dug out of a mud
mass, just the length of the corpse, which was slipped in
feet foremost, the entrance being sealed up with a tile.
The vaulted roofs were of tiles, set at an acute angle, and
the niches were in rows, one above the other, in the thick
sand walls, which seem to have been originally built round
a square.
Our ferash pulled away some of the tiles, and in one
grave there was a skeleton, its skull covered with thick,
short, brown hair. My brother wanted to keep this, as it
might have thrown light upon these early inhabitants of
Kerman, but the relic fell to bits when touched.
This account of Kerman would be incomplete without