136 ON THE TRACK OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT
For the sake of completeness and by way of comparison I shall here describe the Sialak Pass, the defile running parallel to the Sar-Darrah and lying two or three miles to the north. I traversed it on my third visit, entering at the eastern end and proceeding almost to its western mouth, where the entrance had been blocked, as I stated above, by a fall of rocks three or four months before. The Sialak Pass is certainly much more striking as a defile than is the Sar-Darrah, although consider- ably shorter in length. I counted something over three thou- sand paces from the western barrier, which now closes it, to the eastern egress ; ^ and it took me about forty minutes to cover the distance in each direction, first on horseback, then return- ing on foot, as the path in both ways was very rough.
In character the Sialak is more like a canyon, a narrow gorge with lofty, precipitous sides. The walls at the western end rise to a height of nearly a thousand feet, while those at the eastern orifice may be four or five hundred in elevation. They are formed of rugged volcanic rocks, that present wild and fantastic shapes in their curiously twisted formation, and at times they showed the same streaked effect noticeable in the Sar-Darrah. The space between these stupendous bulwarks is seldom more than from thirty to fifty feet, and often much less, because huge jagged boulders, flung down from the lofty crags, nearly shut up the path and leave scarcely a bridle way.^ No cart or wagon could ever pass through the gorge, because of the insur- mountable obstacles it presents. As in the Sar-Darrah, a narrow salt stream threads its way through the entire length of the defile; its water was so saline as to cause a cut in the hand to smart sharply. At one point in the gorge, where the water must formerly have been choked, it had worn away the igneous rock in such a manner that it looked as if hewn by the hand of
1 According to Chodzko, op. cit. , on the points which one takes as the p. 301, Rawlinson paced off the length beginning and end of the gorge, as over twenty-five hundred paces, 2 Chodzko, p. 301, considers the making twenty-six zigzag turns on the space of the passage allowed as vary- way. In such figures, much depends ing between thirty feet and five feet.
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