ninety miles, and in width from forty to sixty, boasts a still greater
fertility.

The flat country along the southern base of the mountains, which ancient
writers regard as Parthia, par excellence, is A strip of territory about
300 miles long, varying in width ac cording to the labor and the skill
applied by its inhabitants to the perfecting of a system of irrigation.
At present the _kanats_, or underground water-courses, are seldom
carried to a distance of more than a mile or two from the foot of the
hills; but it is thought that anciently the cultivation was extended
considerably further. Ruined cities dispersed throughout the tract
sufficiently indicate its capabilities, and in a few places where much
attention is paid to agriculture the results are such as to imply that
the soil is more than ordinarily productive. The salt desert lies,
however, in most places within ten or fifteen miles of the hills; and
beyond this distance it is obviously impossible that the "Atak" or
"Skirt" should at any time have been inhabited.

It is evident that the entire tract above described must have been at
all times a valuable and much coveted region. Compared with the arid and
inhospitable deserts which adjoin it upon the north and south, Khorasan,
the ancient Parthia and Hyrcania, is a terrestrial Paradise. Parthia,
though scantily wooded, still produces in places the pine, the walnut,
the sycamore, the ash, the poplar, the willow, the vine, the mulberry,
the apricot, and numerous other fruit trees. Saffron, asafoetida, and
the gum ammoniac plant, are indigenous in parts of it. Much of the soil
is suited for the cultivation of wheat, barley, and cotton. The ordinary
return upon wheat and barley is reckoned at ten for one. Game abounds
in the mountains, and fish in the underground water-courses. Among the
mineral treasures of the region may be enumerated copper, lead, iron,