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 country is absolutely without streams, and would be uninhabitable were it not for the _kanats_ or _kareezes_--subterranean channels made by art for the conveyance of spring water to be used in irrigation.

The most desolate portion of the mountain tract is towards the north and north-east, where it adjoins upon the third region, which is the worst of the three.