132 ON THE TRACK OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT
briny to the taste. No dust-parched army could quench their thirst in its brackish waves. The bitterness of the stream, the narrowness of the gateway, and the saline exudation from the rocks, recalled vividly to my mind the description given by Pliny of the entrance to the Caspian Gates.
<The ridges are broken by a passage so narrow that wagons proceed singly with difficulty for a distance of eight miles, the whole work having been made by hand. On the right hand and on the left are over-hanging rocks, which look as if they had been exposed to the action of fire.i There is a dry tract for twenty-eight miles. Salt water, issuing from the rocks and collecting into a stream {con- rivatus), adds difficulty to the defile.^ Moreover, the large quantity of snakes does not permit passing through except in winter. . . . The Pratitae, called Paredon, hold the Caspian Gates. ' On the other side of these lie the deserts of Parthia and the ridges of Cithenus. Directly after the same (i.e. Mt. Cithenus?) there is the most delightful place of all Parthia ; it is called C hoar a. There are two cities of the Parthians there, formerly in opposition to the Medes. Calliope (is one) and the other was formerly on miles from the Gates.' *
For some distance, as we drove through the first gulch and alongside the stream, there was room only for our carriage, and for a considerable space we had to enter the bed of the water- course itself. The width of the passage was sometimes hardly a dozen feet, furrowing its way through soft volcanic rock and earth, then slightly widening to a breadth varying between fifteen and forty feet, and afterwards broadening out to two hundred yards, so that we were able to drive up along the
1 Lit. ' similar to charred remains ' noted elsewhere. On Afrldun, Par6- — ambustis similes. dun, compare Marquart, Untersuch-
2 Pliny refers elsewhere (iV. H. 31. ungen z. Gesch. von Eran, 2. 33, Leip- 7. 39, § 75) to the salt streams of the zig, 1905.
Caspian Gates. 4 pnny, N. H. 6. 14-15. 17, §§ 43-
3 The name Paredon preserves the 44. Instead of ' 133 miles,' Marquart, older form, Paredun, of the station Untersuchungen, 2. 22, proposes to that is called Afrldun by the Arab- read, 'Ic^cxxziiimilliapassuum' ;h\it Persian writers, and which lies on that is not satisfactory, as I have noted the road from Rai to the Sar-Darrah In my forthcoming monograph on the Pass and Khvar (Choara), as I have Caspian Gates.
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