The character of the tract is extremely diversified.  Ancient writers divided the country into three strongly contrasted regions.  The first, or coast tract, was (they said) a sandy desert, producing nothing but a few dates, owing to the intensity of the heat.  Above this was a fertile region, grassy, with well-watered meadows and numerous vineyards, enjoying a delicious climate, producing almost every fruit but the olive, containing pleasant parks or “paradises,” watered by a number of limpid streams and clear lakes, well wooded in places, affording an excellent pasture for horses and for all sorts of cattle, abounding in water-fowl and game of every kind, and altogether a most delightful abode.  Beyond this fertile region, towards the north, was a rugged mountain tract, cold and mostly covered with snow, of which they did not profess to know much.

In this description there is no doubt a certain amount of truth; but it is mixed probably with a good deal of exaggeration.  There is no reason to believe that the climate or character of the country has undergone any important alteration between the time of Nearchus or Strabo and the present day.  At present it is certain that the tract in question answers but very incompletely to the description which those writers give of it.  Three regions may indeed be distinguished, though the natives seem now to speak of only two; but none of them corresponds at all exactly to the accounts of the Greeks.  The coast tract is represented with the nearest approach to correctness.  This is, in fact, a region of arid plain, often impregnated with salt, ill-watered, with a poor soil, consisting either of sand or clay, and productive of little besides dates and a few other fruits.  A modern historian says of it that “it bears a greater resemblance in soil and climate to Arabia than to the rest of Persia.”  It is very hot and unhealthy, and can at no time have supported more than a sparse and scanty population.  Above this, towards the north, is the best and most fertile portion of the territory.  A mountain tract, the continuation of Zagros, succeeds to the flat and sandy coast region, occupying the greater portion of Persia Proper.  It is about two hundred miles in width, and consists of an alternation of mountain, plain, and narrow valley, curiously intermixed, and hitherto mapped very imperfectly.  In places this district answers fully to the description of Nearchus, being, “richly fertile, picturesque, and romantic almost beyond imagination, with lovely wooded dells, green mountain sides, and broad plains, suited for the production of almost any crops.”  But it is only to the smaller moiety of the region that such a character attaches; more than half the mountain tract is sterile and barren; the supply of water is almost everywhere scanty; the rivers are few, and have not much volume; many of them, after short courses, end in the sand, or in small salt lakes, from which the superfluous water is evaporated.  Much of the