The afternoon was wearing on, so we bade adieu to the assembled crowd, and resumed our eastward march, halting an hour at Rivad (or Rivand) on the left and then leaving Mount Kumish behind on the right across the plain. ^ A lark soaring high in the heavens called away our thoughts from the channel in which they had been running, but we pursued our journey with the assurance that, during the two days just past, we had been traversing historic ground and had located, so far as tradi- tion can be followed, certain sites and scenes connected with one of the greatest battles in the holy Zoroastrian wars between Turan and Iran.
1 Nasir ad-Din Shah, Diary^ p. 121, the fine serai of Eehwund, standing
•wrote, ' Ribad is a thousand paces from entirely by itself ; the village is some
the road, with thirty or forty families ; distance to the left.' Euan Smith (in
it has a good caravansarai and an Goldsmid, Eastern Persia, 1. 374)
old reservoir.' Clerk (JBGS. 31. 43) merely notes 'we reached Rivad,
similarly remarks, 'the road passes twenty miles from Sabzawdr.'
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