Part 13

I was off the track trying to get past a caravan and overtake the others, when down came the horse and I in a drift fully ten feet deep. Somehow I was not quite detached from the saddle, and in the scrimmage got into it again, and a few desperate plunges brought us out, with the horse's breastplate broken.

When we reached the great plateau above this village, a great blank sheet of snow, surrounded by mountains, now buried in white mists, now revealed, with snow flurries drifting wildly round their ghastly heads, I found that the Arab, the same horse which was so ill at Nanej, was "dead beat," and as it only looked a mile to the village I got off, and walked in the deep snow along the rungs of the "mule ladders," which are so fatiguing for horses. But the distance was fully three miles, with a stream to wade through, half a mile of deep wet soil to plunge through, and the thawed mud of a large village to splash through; and as I dared not mount again for fear of catching cold, I trailed forlornly into Saruk, following the men who were riding.

Can it be said that they rode? They sat feebly on animals, swaddled in felts and furs, the _pagri_ concealing each face with the exception of one eye in a blue goggle; rolling from side to side, clutching at ropes and halters, moaning "_Ya Allah!_"--a deplorable cavalcade.

Saruk has some poplars, and is surrounded by a ruinous mud wall. It is a village of 150 houses, and is famous for very fine velvety carpets, of small patterns, in vivid vegetable dyes. At an altitude of 7500 feet, it has a severe climate, and only grows wheat and barley, sown in April and reaped in September. All this mountainous region that we are toiling through is blank on the maps, and may be a dead level so far as anything there is represented, though even its passes are in several cases over 7000 feet high.

_Saruk, Feb. 13._--The circumstances generally are unfavourable, and we are again detained. The Afghan orderly, who is also interpreter, is very ill, and though he is very plucky it is impossible for him to move; the cook seems "all to pieces," and is overcome by cough and lassitude; Abbas Khan is ill, and his face has lost its comicality; and in the same room Hadji lies, groaning and moaning that he will not live through the night. Even M----'s herculean strength is not what it was. I have chills, but in spite of them and the fatigue am really much better than when I left Baghdad, so that though I exercise the privilege of grumbling at the hardships, I ought not to complain of them, though they are enough to break down the strongest men. I really like the journey, except when I am completely knocked up, or the smoke is exceptionally blinding.

The snow in this yard is lying in masses twelve feet high, rising out of slush I do not know how many feet deep. It looks as if we had seen the last of the winter. The mercury is at 32° now. It is very damp and cold sitting in a room with one side open to the snow, and the mud floor all slush from the drip from the roof. The fuel is wet, and though a man has attempted four times to light a fire, he has only succeeded in making an overpowering smoke, which prefers hanging heavily over the floor and me to making its exit through the hole in the roof provided for it. The door must be kept open to let in light, and it also lets in fowls and many cats. My _dhurrie_ has been trampled into the slush, and a deadly cold strikes up through it. Last night a man (for Hadji was _hors de combat_) brought in some live embers, and heaped some gum tragacanth thorns and animal fuel upon them; there was no chimney, and the hole in the roof was stopped by a clod. The result was unbearable. I covered my head with blankets, but it was still blinding and stifling, and I had to extinguish the fire with water and bear the cold, which then was about 20°. Later, there was a tempest of snow and rain, with a sudden thaw, and water dripped with an irksome sound on my well-protected bed, no light would burn, and I had the mortification of knowing that the same drip was spoiling writing paper and stores which had been left open to dry! But a traveller rarely lies awake, and to-day by keeping my feet on a box, and living in a mackintosh, I am out of both drip and mud. Such a room as I am now in is the ordinary room of a Persian homestead. It is a cell of mud, not brick, either sun or kiln dried. Its sides are cracked and let in air. Its roof is mud, under which is some brushwood lying over the rafters. It has no light holes, but as the door has shrunk considerably from the door posts, it is not absolutely dark. It may be about twelve feet square. Every part of it is blackened by years of smoke. The best of it is that it is raised two feet from the ground to admit of a fowl-house below, and opens on a rough platform which runs in front of all the dwelling-rooms. With the misfitting door and cracked sides it is much like a sieve.

I have waited to describe a Persian peasant's house till I had seen more of them. The yard is an almost unvarying feature, whether a small enclosure with a low wall and a gateway closed at night by a screen of reeds, or a great farmyard like this, with an arched entrance and dwelling-rooms for two or three generations along one or more of the sides.

The house walls are built of mud, not sun-dried brick, and are only one story high. The soil near villages is mostly mud, and by leading water to a given spot, a pit of mortar for building material is at once made. This being dug up, and worked to a proper consistency by the feet of men, is then made into a wall, piece after piece being laid on by hand, till it reaches a height of four feet and a thickness of three--the imperative tradition of the Persian builder. This is allowed a few days for hardening, when another layer of similar height but somewhat narrower is laid upon it, _takchahs_ or recesses a foot deep or more being worked into the thickness of the wall, and the process is repeated till the desired height is attained. When the wall is thoroughly dry it is plastered inside and outside with a mixture of mud and chopped straw, and if this plastering is repeated at intervals, the style of construction is very durable.

The oven or _t[=a]nd[=u]r_ is placed in the floor of one room, at least, and answers for cooking and heating. A peasant's house has no windows, and the roof does not project beyond the wall.

All roofs are flat. Rude rafters of poplar are laid across the walls about two feet apart. In a _ketchuda's_ or a wealthier peasant's house, above these are laid in rows peeled poplar rods, two inches apart, then a rush mat, and then the resinous thorns of the tragacanth bush, which are not liable to decay; but in the poorer houses the owner contents himself with a coarse reed mat or a layer of brushwood above the rafters. On this is spread a well-trodden-down layer of mud, then eight or ten inches of dry earth, and the whole is thickly plastered with mixed straw and mud. A slight slope at the back with a long wooden spout carries off the water. Such a roof is impervious to rain except in very severe storms if kept in order, that is, if it be plastered once a year, and well rolled after rain. Few people are so poor as not to have a neatly-made stone roller on their roofs. If this is lacking, the roof must be well tramped after rain by bare feet, and in all cases the snow must be shovelled off.

These roofs, among the peasantry, have no parapets. They are the paradise of dogs, and in hot weather the people take up their beds and sleep there, partly for coolness and partly because the night breeze gives freedom from mosquitos. In simple country life, though the premises of the peasants for the sake of security are contiguous, there are seldom even balustrades to the roofs, though in summer most domestic operations are carried on there. Fifty years ago Persian law sanctioned the stoning without trial or mercy of any one caught in the act of gazing into the premises of another, unless the gazer were the king.

Upon the courtyard stables, barns, and store-rooms open, but so far I notice that the granary is in the house, and that the six-feet-high clay receptacles for grain are in the living-room.

Looking from above upon a plain, the poplars which surround villages where there is a sufficiency of water attract the eye. At this season they are nothing but a brown patch on the snow. The villages themselves are of light brown mud, and are surrounded usually by square walls with towers at the corners, and all have a great gate. Within the houses or hovels the families are huddled irregularly, with all their appurtenances, and in winter the flocks and herds are in subterranean pens beneath. In summer the animals go forth at sunrise and return at sunset. The walls, which give most of the villages a fortified aspect, used to afford the villagers a degree of protection against the predatory Turkomans, and now give security to the flocks against Lur and other robbers.

Every village has its _ketchuda_ or headman, who is answerable for the taxes, the safety of travellers, and other matters.

_Siashan, Feb. 16._--The men being a little better, we left Saruk at nine on the 14th, I on a bright little Baghdadi horse, in such good case that he frequently threw up his heels in happy playfulness. The temperature had fallen considerably, there had been a fresh snowfall, and the day was very bright. The Arab horses are suffering badly in their eyes from the glare of the snow.

If I had not had such a lively little horse I should have found the march a tedious one, for we were six hours in doing eleven and a half miles on a level! The head _charvadar_ had gone on early to make some arrangements, and the others loaded the animals so badly that Hadji and the cook rolled off their mules into the deep semi-frozen slush from the packs turning just outside the gates. We had three mules with us with worn-out tackle, and the loads rolled over many times, the riders, who were too weak to help themselves, getting bad falls. As each load, owing to the broken tackle, took fifteen minutes to put on again, and the men could do little, a great deal of hard, exasperating work fell on M----. After one bad fall in a snowdrift myself, I rode on alone with one mule with a valuable burden. This, turning for the fourth time, was soon under his body, and he began to kick violently, quite dismaying me by the bang of his hoofs against cases containing scientific instruments. It was a droll comedy in the snow. I wanted to get hold of his halter, but every time I went near him he whisked round and flung up his heels, till I managed to cut the ragged surcingle and set him free, when I caught him in deep snow, in which my horse was very unwilling to risk himself.

Soon after leaving Saruk, which, as I mentioned before, is famous for very fine carpets, we descended gently upon the great plain of Feraghan, perhaps the largest carpet-producing district of Persia. These carpets are very fine and their patterns are unique, bringing a very high price. This plain has an altitude of about 7000 feet, is 45 miles in length by from 8 to 15 in breadth, is officially stated to have 650 villages upon it, all agricultural and carpet producing, and is considerably irrigated by streams, which eventually lose themselves in a salt lake at its eastern extremity. It is surrounded by hills, with mountain ranges behind them, and must be, both as to productiveness and population, one of the most flourishing districts in Persia.

We were to have marched to Kashgird, but on reaching the hamlet of Ahang Garang I found that Abbas Khan had taken quarters there, saying that Kashgird was in ruins.

Hadji, who had allowed himself to roll off several times, was moaning and weeping on the floor of my room, groaning out, with many cries of _Ya Allah_, "Let me stay here till I'm better; I don't want any wages; I shall be killed, oh, killed! Oh, my family! I shall never see Bushire any more!" Though there was much reason to think he was shamming, I did the little that he calls his "work," and left him to smoke his opium pipe and sleep by the fire in peace.

I was threatened with snow-blindness in one eye; in fact I saw nothing with it, and had to keep it covered up. One of the _charvadars_ lay moaning outside my room, poor fellow, taking chlorodyne every half-hour, and another had got a bad foot from frost-bite. They have been terribly exposed, and the soft snow at a higher temperature has been worse for them than the dry powdery snow at a low temperature, as it soaks their socks, shoes, and leggings, and then freezes. Making Liebig's beef tea warms one, and they like it even from a Christian hand. The Afghan orderly bore up bravely, but was very weak. Indeed the prospect of getting these men to Tihran is darkening daily.

My room, though open to the snow at one end, was comfortable. The oven had been lighted twelve hours before, and it was delightful to hang one's feet into the warm hole. There were holes for light in the roof, and cold though it was, so long as daylight lasted these were never free from veiled faces looking down.

In order to become thoroughly warm it was necessary to walk long and briskly on the roof, and this brought all the villagers below it to stare the stare of vacuity rather than of curiosity. A snow scene is always beautiful at sunset, and this was exceptionally so, as the long indigo shadows on the plain threw into greater definiteness the gleaming, glittering hills, at one time dazzling in the sunshine, at another flushed in the sunset. The plain of Feraghan as seen from the roof was one smooth expanse of pure deep snow, broken only by brown splashes, where mud villages were emphasised by brown poplars, the unbroken, unsullied snow, two feet deep on the level and any number in the drifts, looking like a picture of the Arctic Ocean, magnificent in its solitude, one difficult track, a foot wide, the solitary link with the larger world which then seemed so very far away.

Things went better yesterday on the whole, though the mercury fell to zero in the night, and I was awakened several times by the cold of my open room, and when a number of people came at daylight for medicines my fingers were so benumbed that I could scarcely measure them. What a splendid field for a medical missionary loving his profession this plain with its 650 villages would be, where there are curable diseases by the hundred! Many of the suffering people have told me that they would give lodging and the best of their food to any English doctor who would travel among them.

The loads were well balanced yesterday, and Hadji only pulled his over once and only rolled off once, when Abbas Khan exclaimed, "He's not a man; why did Allah make such a creature?" We got off at nine, the roofs being crowded to see us start. Fuel is very scarce at Ahang Garang. For the cooking and "parlour" fire, the charge was forty-five _krans_, or about twenty-eight shillings! Probably this included a large _modakel_. For a room from two to four _krans_ is expected.

Through M----'s kindness I now have a good horse to ride, and the difference in fatigue is incredible. We embarked again on the vast plain of snow. It was a grim day, and most ghastly and desolate this end of the plain looked, where the waters having done their fertilising work are lost in a salt lake, the absolutely white hills round the plain being emphasised by the blue neutral tint of the sky. For the first ten miles there was little more than a breeze, for the last ten a pitiless, ruthless, riotous north-easterly gale, blowing up the snow in hissing drifts, as it swept across the plain with a desolate screech.

The coverings with which we were swaddled were soon penetrated. The cold seemed to enter the bones, and to strike the head and face like a red-hot hammer, stunning as it struck, the tears wrung from the eyes were frozen, at times even the eyelids were frozen together. The frozen snow hit one hard. Hands and feet were by turns benumbed and in anguish, terrific blasts loaded with hard lumps of snow came down from the hills, snow was drifting from all the white ranges above us; on the more exposed part of the track the gusts burst with such violence as to force some of the mules off it to flounder in the deep snow; my Arab was struck so mercilessly on his sore swollen eyes that at times I could scarcely, with my own useless hands, induce him to face the swirls of frozen snow. Swifter and more resistless were the ice-laden squalls, more and more obliterated became the track, till after a fight of over three hours, and the ceaseless crossing of rolling hills and deep hollows, we reached the top of a wind-bared slope 7700 feet in altitude and saw this village, looking from that distance quite imposing, on a hill on the other side of a stream crossed by a brick bridge, with a ruined fort on a height above it. It promised shelter--that was all. Below the village there was an expanse of snow, sloping up to pure white hills outlined against an indigo depth of ominous-looking clouds.

While M---- went up a hill for some scientific work, I followed the orderly, who could scarcely sit on his horse from pain and weakness, into the most wretchedly ruinous, deserted-looking village I have yet seen, epitomising the disenchantment which a near view of an Eastern city brings, and up a steep alley to a ruinous yard heaped with snow-covered ruins, on one side of which were some ruinous rooms, their backs opening on a precipice above the river, and on the north-east wind. I tumbled off my horse, Abbas Khan, the least sick of the men, with benumbed hands breaking my fall. The severe cold had stiffened all my joints. We could scarcely speak; the bones of my face were in intense pain, and I felt as if the cold were congealing my heart.

With Abbas Khan's help I chose the rooms, the worst we have ever had. The one I took for myself has an open-work door facing the wind, and it is impossible to have a fire, for the draught blows sticks, ashes, and embers over the room. The others are worse. It is an awful night, blowing and snowing; all the men but two are _hors de combat_. The poor orderly, using an Afghan phrase, said, "The wind has played the demon with me." He has a fearful cough, and hæmorrhage from the lungs or throat. The cook is threatened with pleurisy. It may truly be called "Hospital Sunday." The day has been chiefly spent in making mustard poultices, which M---- is constantly crossing the yard in three feet of snow to put on, and protectors for the chests and backs, preparing beef tea, making up medicines, etc.

Surely things must have reached their worst. Out of seven men only one servant, and he an Indian lad with a fearful squint and eyes so badly inflamed that he can hardly see where he puts things down, is able to do anything. Two of the _charvadars_ are lying ill in the stable. Mustard plasters, Dover's powders, salicylate of soda, emetics, poultices, clinical thermometers, chlorodyne, and beef tea have been in requisition all day. The cook, the Afghan orderly, and Hadji seem really ill. At eight this morning groans at my door took me out, and one of the muleteers was lying there in severe pain, with the hard fine snow beating on him. Later I heard fresh moaning on my threshold, and found Hadji fallen there with my breakfast. I got him in and he fell again, upsetting the tea, and while I attended to him the big dogs ate up the _chapatties_! He had a good deal of fever, and severe rheumatism, and on looking at his eyes I saw that he was nearly blind. He lost his blue glasses some days ago. I sent him to bed in the "kitchen" for the whole day, where he lay groaning in comfort by the fire with his opium pipe and his tea. He thinks he will not survive the night, and has just given me his dying directions!

Afterwards M---- came for the thermometer and chlorodyne, and remarked that my room was "unfit for a beast." The truth is I share it with several very big dogs. It did look grotesquely miserable last night--black, fireless, wet, dirty, with all my things lying on the dirty floor, having been tumbled about by these dogs in their search for my last box of Brand's meat lozenges, which they got out of a strong, tightly-tied-up bag, which they tore into strips. On going for my fur cloak to-day, these three dogs, who, I believe, would take on civilisation more quickly than their masters, were all found rolled up under it, and lying on my bed.

The mercury in the "parlour" with a large fire cannot be raised above 36°. In my room to-night the wet floor is frozen hard and the mercury is 20°. This is nothing after 12° and 16° below zero, but the furious east wind and a singular dampness in the air make it very severe. Yesterday, before the sky clouded over, there was a most remarkable ring or halo of prismatic colours round the sun, ominous of the storm which has followed.

This place standing high without shelter is fearfully exposed; there is no milk and no comfort of any kind for the sick men. We have decided to wrap them up and move them to Kûm, where there is a Persian doctor with a European education; but it is a great risk, though the lesser of two. I have just finished four protectors for the back and chest, three-quarters of a yard long by sixteen inches wide, buttoning on the shoulders, of a very soft felt _namad_ nearly half an inch thick--a precaution much to be commended.