Ruined cities dispersed throughout the tract sufficiently indicate its capabilities, and in a few places where much attention is paid to agriculture the results are such as to imply that the soil is more than ordinarily productive.

The salt desert lies, however, in most places within ten or fifteen miles of the hills; and beyond this distance it is obviously impossible that the "Atak" or "Skirt" should at any time have been inhabited.
It is evident that the entire tract above described must have been at all times a valuable and much coveted region.

Compared with the arid and inhospitable deserts which adjoin it upon the north and south, Khorasan, the ancient Parthia and Hyrcania, is a terrestrial Paradise.

Parthia, though scantily wooded, still produces in places the pine, the walnut, the sycamore, the ash, the poplar, the willow, the vine, the mulberry, the apricot, and numerous other fruit trees.

Saffron, asafoetida, and the gum ammoniac plant, are indigenous in parts of it.