First Sentence

"SEISTAN, land of burning heats and withering cold, of rushing pitiless winds, of pestilence, of biting insects and reptiles, of dreary sands and sunbaked plains, of buried and forgotten cities, of fens and swamps and one great lonely lake,-it is here that the Helmand, after many wanderings in Afghanistan, spreads into a delta, and finally comes to a miserable end amid mud flats and reed beds, sand-dunes and grotesquely carved yellow cliffs."