1 196 SHUHR ROGHAN.
2 this. part of the route, is hilly, rugged, much cut up by water-
3 courses, and with difficulty practicable for guns. There are con-
4 siderable supplies of forage, and abundance of water from the
5 river-Turnak, near the west bank of which it is situate. Eleva-
6 tion above the sea, 6,514 feet. Lat. 32° 28’, long. 67° 12’,
7 SHUHR ROGHAN, in Beloochistan, in the province of Lus,
8 a very remarkable relic of some troglodyte people who formerly
9 held this country, at present so desolate and neglected. Itisa
10 town of caves, resembling, though on a small scale, the celebrated
11 excavations at Bamian. As no abridgement could convey the effect
12 in Ae pa of the description given by Carless! of this place, his account will
13 Ace. of a Jour. to be quoted in his own words :—‘ About nine miles to the northward
14 le of Beylah, a range of low hills sweeps in a semicircle from.one side
15 of the valley to the other, and forms its head. The Poorally
16 river issues from a deep ravine on the western side, and is about
17 two hundred yards broad. It is bounded on one side by very
18 steep cliffs forty or fifty feet high, on the summit of which there
19 is an ancient burying-ground, and the water runs bubbling along
20 it in two or three small rivulets, among heaps of stones and
21 patches of tamarisk jungle. Having crossed the stream, we pur-
22 sued our way up its bed amongst the bushes, until we gained the
23 narrow ravine through which it flows, and then, turning into one
24 of the lateral branches, entered Shuhr Roghan. The scene was
25 singular. On either side of a wild, broken ravine, the rocks rise
26 perpendicularly to the height of four or five hundred feet, and
27 are excavated, as far as can be seen in some places, where.there
28 is footing to ascend, up to the summit: these excavations are
29 most numerous along the lower parts of the hills, and form dis-
30 tinct houses, which are uninjured by time. They consist in
31 general of a room fifteen feet square, forming a kind of open
32 verandah, with an interior chamber of the same dimensions, ta
33 which you gain admittance by a door; there are niches for lamps
34 in many, and a place built up and covered in, apparently intended
35 to hold grain. Most of them had Been plastered over with clay,
36 and in a few, when the form of the rock allowed of its being done,
37 the interior of the apartment is lighted by small windows. The
38 houses at the summit of the cliffs are now inaccessible, from the
39 narrow, precipitous paths by which they were approached having
40 been worn away, and those at the base appear to have been occu-
41 pied by the poorer class: of inhabitants; for many of them are