Persia, as then constituted, extended from the mouths of the Oroatis--the modern Tab--as far as the entrance to the Straits of Ormuzd.* The coast-line, which has in several places been greatly modified since ancient times by the formation of alluvial deposits, consists of banks of clay and sand, which lie parallel with the shore, and extend a considerable distance inland; in some places the country is marshy, in others parched and rocky, and almost everywhere barren and unhealthy. The central region is intersected throughout its whole length by several chains of hills, which rise terrace-like, one behind the other, from the sea to the plateau; some regions are sterile, more especially in the north and east, but for the most part the country is well wooded, and produces excellent crops of cereals. Only a few rivers, such as the Oroatis, which forms the boundary between Persia and Susiana,** the Araxes, and the Bagradas succeed in breaking through the barriers that beset their course, and reach the Persian Gulf;*** most of the others find no outlet, and their waters accumulate at the bottom of the valleys, in lakes whose areas vary at the different seasons. * Herodotus imagined Carmania and Persia Proper to be one and the same province; from the Alexandrine period onwards historians and geographers drew a distinction between the two. ** The form of the name varies in different writers. Strabo calls it the Oroatis, Nearchus the Arosis; in Pliny it appears as Oratis and Zarotis, and in Ammianus Marcellinus as Oroates. *** The Araxes is the modern Bendamir. The Kyros, which flowed past Persepolis, is now the Pulwar, an affluent of the Bendamir. The Bagradas of Ptolemy, called the Hyperis by Juba, is the modern Nabend. [Illustration: 282.jpg SCENE IN THE MOUNTAINS OF PERSIA.] Drawn by Boudier, from Costs and Flandin, _Voyage en Perse_, vol. i. pl. xcvi. [Illustration: 285.jpg HEAD OF A PERSIAN ARCHER] Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph of the Naksh-i-Rustem bas-relief taken by Dieulafoy. The mountainous district is furrowed in all directions by deep ravines, with almost vertical sides, at the bottom of which streams and torrents follow a headlong course. The landscape wears a certain air of savage grandeur; giant peaks rise in needle-like points perpendicularly to the sky; mountain paths wind upward, cut into the sides of the steep precipices; the chasms are spanned by single-arched bridges, so frail and narrow that they seem likely to be swept away in the first gail that blows. No country could present greater difficulties to the movements of a regular army or lend itself more readily to a system of guerrilla warfare. It was unequally divided between some ten or twelve tribes:* chief among these were the Pasargadaa, from which the royal family took its origin; after them came the Maraphii and Maspii.