Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/331

 village of Gaz, dominated by the fortress around which it is built. The locality round about was notably well supplied with water and trees, even though the water in the moat was green with a malarious scum. But the place was healthy, and com- prised about two hundred houses with four or five members to a family. Best of all — in Persia an almost infallible sign of relative welfare — the walls were more carefully kept up than elsewhere in this region. ' This is a good place,' said Safar with a knowing look, and that opinion was later shared by an old shepherd at Tak, who praised Gaz far above his own home.

The fields beyond, as we cantered along, looked under good cultivation. Now and then I reined up for a moment to ask the peasants for some information, and always received a civil response, while one of the best-informed of the laborers — his red shirt flashed almost as glaringly as his sickle — told me much about the routes. Practically all the traffic from Damghan to Astrabad — or from the territory of Hecatompylos to Zadracarta — goes by way of Shahrud, the route which Alexander's baggage column must have followed. If Alexander himself pursued the difficult Chashmah-i Ali route, as we may well believe — with his column of picked men, as noted above — he must have made a very slight detour to pass through Tak, judging from the modern trails, for the natives insisted that the route from Damghan to Astrabad, in that direction, lay a trifle to the west of Tak, but was little used because of its difficulty. All this would match precisely the classic statements alluded to above.

My careful reconnoitering and note-taking seemed eventually to arouse the suspicions of my trusty communicator. No doubt imagining that I might be a spy, he came back from the mill towards which he was going and asked Safar if I was a Russian. Happily Safar was able to reassure him that I was an American from the New World, or Yanki Diinya, with no sinister inten- tion regarding his country, and anxious only to collect data with

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