'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎127] (162/714)

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FEO.AI KUCHAX TO KELAT-I-NADIRE 127
moon hung high overhead, and straight in front the Great Bear
twinkled solemnly, standing upon his tail. At the exit of the
gorge was a ruined and unoccupied fort. The track now broad
ened into a flat and open valley, across which were drawn the
segments of a curious rocky ridge which had been burst through
by some convulsion of nature, and whose strata were strangely
contorted and inclined. Streams of water, impregnated with
naphtha, gushed from the mountain side and joined the river
channel, from which a flock of wild duck started with a prodigious
clamour. The sun rose as we were about half down the valley,
and disclosed the southern wall of Kelat on our right hand, a
magnificent and lofty rampart of rock, springing from the valley
bottom to a height of 700 or 800 feet, as level along the summit
as though pared by a plane, but scarred and fluted down its
absolutely vertical and impervious sides. Four times I passed to
and fro beneath this stupendous barrier, and never failed to think
it one of the most astonishing natural phenomena that I have ever
seen. Its outer slopes or glacis consist of steep acclivities and
shelving spurs, which swell up to it from the plain, and resemble
colossal piles of debris that might have been shot from its summit.
From the point where they terminate the rock rises sheer and
abrupt to its aerial battlements. As this wall encloses Kelat on
the south-east side, it does not catch the morning sun, but remains
plunged in shadow. In the evening, however, towards sundown,
the red sandstone under the descending rays glistens like columns
of, porphyry and jasper, and the entire rocky rampart seems to be
on fire.
In descending the valley, where not a soul was to be seen, 1
had observed a place ahead of us where the level top of the rockv
The gate P ara P e t ended abruptly in a jutting point, and its con-
ofArga- tinuity was evidently broken by some sort of rift or
wan Shah ^ drew nearer this spot, at a distance of
about seven miles from the gorge by which we had entered the
valley, the sides began to converge and close, until presently they
left only the narrowest passage, the bottom of which was filled
by the bed of the stream. Following this natural cutting through
one or two zigzags, we came in sight of a rocky portal, some
twenty yards in width, completely barred by a wall, the only
aperture in which consisted of three arches that admitted the
stream, and were also the sole gateway for any visitor to Kelat.