Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/233

 itself is one of the oldest landmarks of the bygone faith, and grimly it seemed to beckon back with dead hand to the for- gotten days of the last Achaemenian king.

Soon after leaving Rai we began to skirt the edges of the Plain of Varamin, which receives its name from the ruined city of Varamin, lying some hours distant from Rai.^ The road along much of the way was level, foretokening the character of a great part of the expanse we were to traverse in crossing northern Persia. The region in general is well watered by streams from the Jaj, or Jaja Rud, which flow briskly from the mountains in the north, but ultimately lose themselves in the desert. Though water is abundant, I noticed that there was little cultivation in the district except around the hamlets, where special crops of wheat had been sown. Much of the plain was covered merely with tussocks of sipand, a weed too bitter even for camels to eat, and used chiefly for burning, though poor enough for that. The natives find in it one virtue, how- ever; they gather its seeds and toss them into the fire as a charm to avert the Evil Eye.^ I wondered if the same super- stition prevailed in the days of Darius ; and surely there must have been virtue enough to safeguard a whole community in the bundled mass of the stuff which we saw mingled with grass in the burden on the back of a little donkey who looked like a moving haystack. Some camels which we passed at the next moment came off better than he ; for they had been relieved of their loads and were grazing contentedly on the prickly thorn

other articles by the same author in Barbier de Meynard, Diet. geog. de la

Spiegel Memorial Volume, pp. 237- Perse, p. 587. For illustrations of the

245, Bombay, 1908, and in Essays in monuments and ruins see Sarre, Denk-

Modern Theology as a Testimonial to m'dler persischer Baukunst, Lief. 1 ff.

Charles A. Briggs, pp. 93-97, New plates 18, 19, 54, 55 ; Textband, pp. 58-

York, 1911. 71, Berlin, 1901-1910; likewise Sven

1 For references on the subject of Hedin, Overland to India, 1. 172-177,

the old city of Varamin in Oriental London, 1910.

and modern writers, see Le Strange, 2 por a Persian quatrain on this use

Eastern Caliphate, pp. 216-217, and of the wild rue (sipand) see Browne,

Curzon, Persia, 1. 362-353, and cf. Lit. Hist, of Persia, I. 4:52.

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