'Through Persia on a side-saddle' [‎221] (256/360)

TO KUHAK AND THE FRONTIER COMMISSION 221
sit astride and so push himself along. The Baluchis were
most unwilling for him to ascend this mountain, believ
ing it to be inhabited by evil spirits. This, however, they
imagine to be the case with every lofty and inaccessible
peak, and the grand volcano of Kuh-i-Taftan, of which I
had a glimpse later on, and which my brother also
ascended, is usually called Kuh-i-Chehel-Tan (Mountain
of the Forty Spirits).
Dates and a sort of chupafti are the staple food of the
Baluchis, and they cannot imagine the possibility of dwell
ing in a country where their much-prized fruit is not
grown. The tradition is that when the Arabs overran
Baluchistan each man carried his store of dates with him,
and from the stones they flung away have arisen the
great palm-groves of this country.
Suran was perhaps the most beautiful of our camps in
Baluchistan, the village being on a plain which gleamed
white, with a glittering efflorescence of salt. Exquisite
groves of palms shot up from the dazzling ground, and
beyond them the snowy cone of Kuh-i-Taftan rose
magnificently above the umber and mauve mountain
ranges bounding the horizon. Here the tamarisks grew
tall and slim as Lombardy poplars, and the young date-
palms were planted in pits for purposes of irrigation, and
most carefully swathed up in pieces of palm-leaf matting,
to protect their tender fronds from the animals.
As we were halting for a couple of days at Suran we
set out one morning in search of game, and found that
beyond the ramshackle mud villages, surrounded by the
winter crops of wheat and barley now a foot high, and