It thus contained an area of rather more than 100,000 square miles.
In modern times it is customary to divide the province of Fars into the _ghermsir_, or, "warm district," and the _serdsir_, or "cold region"-- and the physical character of the country must have made such a division thoroughly appropriate at every period.

The "warm district" is a tract of sandy plain, often impregnated with salt, which extends between the mountains and the sea the whole length of the province, being a continuation of the flat region of Susiana, but falling very much short of that region in all the qualities which constitute physical excellence.

The soil is poor, consisting of alternate sand and clay--it is ill-watered, the entire tract possessing scarcely a single stream worthy of the name of river--and, lying only just without the northern Tropic, the district is by its very situation among the hottest of western Asia.

It forms, however, no very large portion of the ancient Persia, being in general a mere strip of land, from ten to fifty miles wide, and thus not constituting more than an eighth part of the territory in question.
The remaining seven eighths belong to the serdsir, or "cold region." The mountain-range which under various names skirts on the east the Mesopotamian lowland, separating off that depressed and generally fertile region from the bare high plateau of Iran, and running continuously in a direction parallel to the course of the Mesopotamian streams--i.e.from the north-west to the south-east--changes its course as it approaches the sea, sweeping gradually round between long.

50 deg.