With the exception of Mazenderan and the other provinces bordering upon the Caspian, and in the Paropamisan range, Persia is arid, possessing few perennial springs, and not one great river; in fact, three-tenths of the country is a desert, and the table-land is nearly a wide scene of desolation. A great salt-desert occupies 27,000 square miles between Irak and Khorasan, of which the soil is a stiff clay, covered with efflorescence of common salt and nitre, often an inch thick, varied only by a few saline plants and patches of verdure in the hollows. This dreary waste joins the large sandy and equally dreary desert of Kerman. Kelat, the capital of Belochistan, is 7000 feet above the level of the sea: round it there is cultivation, but the greater part of that country is a lifeless plain, over which the brick-red sand is drifted by the north wind into ridges like the waves of the sea, often 12 feet high, without a vestige of vegetation. The blast of the desert, whose hot and pestilential breath is fatal to man and animals, renders these dismal sands impassable at certain seasons. Barren lands or bleak downs prevail at the foot of the Lukee and Solimaun ranges, formed of bare porphyry and sandstone, which skirt the eastern edge of the table-land, and dip to the plains of the Indus. In Afghanistan there is little cultivation except on the banks of the streams that flow into the Lake Zerrah, but vitality returns towards the north-east. The plains and valleys among the offsets from the Hindoo Coosh are of surpassing loveliness, and combine the richest peaceful beauty with the majesty of the snow-capped mountains by which they are encircled. CHAPTER IV. The High Lands of the Great Continent (_continued_)—The Oriental Table-Land and its Mountains. THE Oriental plateau, or table-land of Tibet, is an irregular four-sided mass stretching from S.W. to N.E., enclosed and traversed by the highest mountains in the world. It is separated from the table-land of Persia by the Hindoo Coosh, which may be considered as the western prolongation of the Himalaya, occupying the terrestrial isthmus between the low lands of Hindostan and Bucharia.