É. Apor (ed.): Stein, Aurel: Old Routes of Western Iran. (Budapest Oriental Reprints, Ser. B 2.)

Chapter I.—In Westernmost Färs

IO IN WESTERNMOST FÄRS [Chap. I the village, and on its top bears a weather-worn circumvallation forming a square of about 36 yards. No indication as to its age could be found on the surface. After passing below the stretch of terraces bearing the vineyards of Bereshna, many of them now abandoned, we followed the road winding up to Ardakän. The gradually narrowing valley showed a continuous stretch of cultivation at its bottom with scattered groves of walnut and other trees, all welcome proof of the fertility brought here by the water from the snowy massif of Rünj towering in the north. Various considerations induced me to make a day's halt at Ardakän (Fig. 2), which serves as the market-town for the villages of the fertile tract extending over the plateau eastwards. It is also the place which the nomadic Mämasän! tribes using the extensive and as yet little-known high valleys to the north and north-west as their summer grazinggrounds are accustomed to visit for their civilized needs in the way of tea, sugar, fabrics and the like. To the Buyair Ahmad, the most turbulent of these tribes, the means for such purchases were until quite recent years largely furnished by plundering raids carried out on the roads towards Isfahän and Shiräz. So it was scarcely surprising to learn that some of the more substantial houses now occupied by (he Deputy-Governor and some other local officials had been owned before by local headmen who used to add considerably to their income by organizing such forays and acting as receivers for their proceeds. They were now learning better ways by being kept, along with so many of the tribal chiefs all over Irän, among the détenus whom Tehrän sees within its walls under close