Page:Kennedy, Robert John - A Journey in Khorassan (1890).djvu/66

52 Russo-Persian boundary at Chacha. The descent only occupied about forty minutes, by a steep, but good, winding path, after which we entered a narrow valley running north-east, and bisected by a small, sedgy stream. On each side of the valley were rolling hills, planted in places with pistachio nut-trees, and occasionally we passed black, nomad tents, inhabited by shepherds, whose flocks of sheep and goats were extracting such sustenance as they could obtain from the scanty spring herbage which a summer sun would, before long, convert into a brown waste. Cantering along the banks of the stream, keeping the high Atok range in view, we reached the village of Persian Chacha, in the immediate neighbourhood of which we found a charming camping ground — a small, green meadow, surrounded by budding fruit-trees and streams of water, and sheltered from the north by frowning and inaccessible cliffs. Here, while the baggage mules, wearied by a long, stiff march of over thirty miles, were being unladen, and the tents being pitched, we refreshed ourselves with some of General MacLean's inexhaustible champagne, and