Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/473

 With all these reminiscences in mind, I felt a keen sense of delight at the prospect of this visit to Tus in company with our host, and before daybreak the cavalcade was ready at the door of the consulate to start on our excursion. The Afghan savdrs, finely mounted horsemen, with their dark blue and white streamers floating over their shoulders from their pointed gilt- woven caps, were already in the saddle, and took the lead as we cantered out of Mashad at 5.15 a.m., in the direction of Tus, the home of Firdausi, lying some fifteen miles to the northwest.

As we dashed forward at rapid pace. Major Sykes and I laughingly said that our friend Cochran should have carried a handicap weight, for his horse's nose was soon far in the lead, and we had to take with a smile the dust which he and the swift savdrs raised up by their horses' heels. But the distance to be covered at the quick pace set seemed short ; almost before we thought of it we had passed the remains of an old enclosure that doubtless belonged to Tus, and had left behind the ruins of Shahr-i Band, or ' City of the Dam,' which must have been one of the oldest settlements of the town,^ so that soon we found ourselves galloping through green fields, reddened with poppies, along the historic Kashaf Rud, or ' Tortoise Stream,' in sight of Firdausi's Rudbar Gate and of the walls of ruined Tus.^

The famous bridge that leads over the stream into the ruined town is a span of eight arches, about a hundred yards in extent, and eighteen feet broad, with a passageway fourteen feet wide, and it leads to the Rudbar Gate, which lies a hundred and twenty yards beyond its egress, and which I heard called the ' Indigo Gate,' in reminiscence, it would seem, of the camel train laden with precious indigo which Mahmud sent only too late.^

1 On these sites see Fraser, p. 520, 515, 517, 529, 559 ; cf. also Justi, Bei- and Sykes, JBAS. 1910, p. 1114. trdge zur alt. Geog. Pers. 2. 17, 18 ;

2 The Kashaf Kiver is mentioned in Geiger, Ostirdnische KuUur, pp. 119- Bd. 20. 7, 30, under the form Kasak 121).

Rut, and is alluded to several times ' It appears that the high-spirited

under the form Kasah Rud in the daughter of Firdausi refused to accept Shah Ndmah (cf. Mohl, 2. 511, 612, the gift for herself after her father's

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