This is a portion of the high tableland of Iran, the great desert which stretches from the eastern skirts of Zagros to the Hamoon, the Helmend, and the river of Subzawur.

It is a dry and hard plain, intersected at intervals by ranges of rocky hills, with a climate extremely hot in summer and extremely cold in winter, incapable of cultivation, excepting so far as water can be conveyed by _kanats_, which is, of course, only a short distance.

The fox, the jackal, the antelope, and the wild ass possess this sterile and desolate tract, where "all is dry and cheerless," and verdure is almost unknown.
Perhaps the two most peculiar districts of.

Persia are the lake basins of Neyriz and Deriah-i-Nemek.

The rivers given off from the northern side of the great mountain chain between the twenty-ninth and thirty-first parallels, being unable to penetrate the mountains, flow eastward towards the desert; and their waters gradually collect into two streams, which end in two lakes, the Deriah-i-Nemek and that of Neyriz, or Lake Bakhtigan.