Across coveted lands : or, A journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta, overland . ove the flat desert. It is said bysome to be one of a number of isolated watchtowers, but this, I think, is incorrect. According to Major Sykes, who quotes fromthe Seljuk history : Every three hundred pacesa pillar twice the height of a man was built andtwo ??iinars between Gurz and Fahraj, one fortygaz high, the other twenty-five, and under eachminar a caravanserai and a tank. By the word under the historian evidently meant directlyunderneath the tower—which was the customaryway of constructing such buildings
Across coveted lands : or, A journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta, overland . ove the flat desert. It is said bysome to be one of a number of isolated watchtowers, but this, I think, is incorrect. According to Major Sykes, who quotes fromthe Seljuk history : Every three hundred pacesa pillar twice the height of a man was built andtwo ??iinars between Gurz and Fahraj, one fortygaz high, the other twenty-five, and under eachminar a caravanserai and a tank. By the word under the historian evidently meant directlyunderneath the tower—which was the customaryway of constructing such buildings. The minarsseldom rose from the ground, but were and aregenerally constructed on the roofs of proof that this was the case in this particularinstance was that when Goldsmid visited it in1872, he stated that it was built on a squarefoundation. The caravanserai underneath this tower andthe tank are evidently buried by the sand, as isthe case with a great portion of the City ofZaidan. That there is underneath the sand acity connecting the southern portion of Zaidan—. I :^. f^^ XXI BURIED IN SAND 203 still partly above ground—with the northern por-tion of Zaidan, and that this minar rises aboveburied habitations, there can be little doubt, forall along the several miles of intervening sandystretch the earth is covered with debris, ruins andfragments of tiles, bricks, &c., &c., showing theremains of a great city. As we went along, leaving the pillar to thenorth and steering south-east for the main ruinsof Zaidan, we saw close by on the north a verylarge structure forming the section of a cone—the lower portion buried in sand and the upperportion having collapsed,—which a Sistani whoaccompanied us said was an ancient theory may be correct, for it is probablethat the climate of Sistan may have greatlychanged; but it is also possible that the structuremay have been a large flour-mill, for to this daymills are built in Persia on similar exterior lin
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