“‘The only issue thence, on the far side, is by a narrow gorge leading through the mountains, beyond which again are vast plains of grassy lands, the grazing place of nomads: well watered and provisioned at reasonable distances by simple but well furnished villages. The great road goes through all these, still eastward.
“‘These prairies get drier and drier as they rise eastward until, for the last day of your progress, at the wells of Ayn-ayoum you must take a supply of water, for the next twenty-four hours are desert. You reach a crest of the slow ascent and see below you from the summit of the road some half a day’s going across the plain below, the magnificent capital of Dirak.
“‘This noble city, whose name is Mawazan, was founded by the enormously wealthy----’
“‘Yes! Yes!’ I interrupted in a bored tone--for I knew all I wanted to know, ‘some day I must go there. A very amusing journey no doubt. But meanwhile business is business and I must start very early for the north to-morrow morning to look after some purchases I have made in grains; and I must not waste any more of your time.’
“The learned are slow to take a hint, so I locked my arm in his after a friendly fashion and led him genially to the door, where he tried (unsuccessfully) to detain me for further remarks on yet another country famous for its enormous bats.
“When I had got well rid of him--it was already dark--I beat up my quarters without delay, aligned my caravan, added to the inscription on my iron treasure chests the words ‘of Dirak’ (so that the labels now ran ‘SAND FOR THE SULTAN OF DIRAK’), marshalled my armed troop and set out in the night by the northern road. But, long before daybreak, I ordered a deflection to the right, struck the great road along the river and so proceeded eastward into the hills.
“It was as the Learned Man had said: a week’s marching to the sources of the stream led to a pass, and we saw below us at evening a splendid spectacle: that small oval plain of Skandir all girded with enormous precipices, a garden of fruit trees and grain with great prosperous villages in its midst, and the road picking its way by cuttings in the living rock down to the valley floor, and thence making straight for the main town.