Part 19

Except the snowy cone of Demavend, with purple ranges curtaining his feet, no special object of admiration exists; the plains are reddish, yellowish, barren, gravelly, or splotched with salt; the ranges of hills, which are never far off (for Persia is a land of mountains), are either shapeless and gravelly, or rocky, rugged, and splintered, their hue reddish and purplish, their sides scored by the spring rush of wasted torrents, their aspect one of complete desolation, yet not without a certain beauty at this season--rose-flushed in the early morning, passing through shades of cobalt and indigo through the day, and dying away at sunset in translucent amethyst against a sky of ruddy gold.

But, take away the atmospheric colouring--which the advancing heat will abolish--and the plain English of the route is this, that in every direction, far as the eye can reach, the country is a salt waste or a gravelly waste, with a few limited oases of cultivation on the plains and in the folds of the hills, always treeless, except round a few of the villages, where there are small groves of poplars and willows. The villages are clusters of mud hovels, scarcely distinguishable from the wastes, and many of them are ruined and deserted, oppressive exactions or a failure of water being common reasons for a migration. These dismal ruins are shapeless heaps of mud, the square towers of the square walls alone retaining any semblance of form.

Long lines of choked _kanaats_, denoted by their crumbling shafts, attest the industrious irrigation of a former day. Tracks wind wearily among shrunken villages, or cross ridges of mud or gravel to take their unlovely way over arid stony plains. Unwatered tracts of land, once cultivated, as the _kanaats_ show, but now deserts of sand and stones, send up gyrating clouds of gritty dust.

Such is Persia between its two capitals; and yet I repeat that in cool weather, and on a good horse, the journey is a very pleasant one. Most European men ride _chapar_, that is, post; but from what I see of the _chapar_ horses, I would not do it for the sake of doubling the distance travelled in the day, and therefore cannot describe either its pleasures or tortures from experience.

On certain roads, as from Tihran to Shiraz, there are post stations (_chapar khana_) with horses and men at distances of from twenty to twenty-five miles, with a charge of one _kran_ (eightpence) per _farsakh_ (four miles) for each horse engaged, an order having been previously obtained from a government official. Besides your own horse you have to take one for the _shasgird chapar_, or post-boy, who has to take the horses back, and one for the servant. The two latter carry the very limited kit, which includes a long cotton bag, which, being filled with chopped straw at night, forms the traveller's bed. The custom is to ride through all the hours of daylight whenever horses are to be got, doing from sixty to ninety miles a day, always inspired by the hope of "cutting the record," even by half an hour, and winning undying fame.

The horses, which are kept going at a canter so long as they can be thrashed into one, are small and active, and do wonders; but from the strain put upon them, bad feeding, sore backs, and general dilapidation and exhaustion, are constantly tumbling down. Several times I have seen wretched animals brought into the yards, apparently "dead beat," and after getting some chopped straw and a little barley thrashed into a canter again for twenty-five miles more, because the traveller could not get a remount. They often fall down dead under their riders, urged by the heavy _chapar_ whip to the last.

Riding _chapar_, journeying in a _taktrawan_ or litter, or in a _kajaweh_, or riding caravan pace, by which only about thirty miles a day can be covered, are the only modes of travelling in Persia, though I think that with capable assistance a carriage might make the journey from Tihran as far as Kashan.

I lodge in the _chapar khanas_ whenever I can. They consist of mud walls fourteen feet high, enclosing yards deep in manure, with stabling for the _chapar_ horses on two sides, and recesses in their inner walls for mangers. The entrance is an arched gateway. There are usually two dark rooms at the sides, which the servants occupy and cook in, and over the gateway is the _balakhana_, an abortive tower, attained by a steep and crumbling stair, in which I encamp. The one room has usually two doors, half-fitting and non-shutting, and perhaps a window space or two, and the ashes of the last traveller's fire.

Such a breezy rest just suits me, and when my camp furniture has been arranged and I am enjoying my "afternoon tea," I feel "monarch of all I survey," even of the boundless desert, over which the cloud shadows chase each other till it purples in the light of the sinking sun. If there is the desert desolation there is also the desert freedom.

The first halt was delicious after the crowds and fanaticism of Kûm. A broad plain with irrigated patches and a ruinous village was passed; then came the desert, an expanse of camel-brown gravel thickly strewn with stones, with a range of low serrated brown hills, with curious stratification, on the east. A few caravans of camels, and the _haram_ of the Governor of Yezd in closely-covered _kajawehs_, alone broke the monotony. Before I thought we were half-way we reached the _abambars_, the small brown caravanserai, and the _chapar khana_ of Passangh[=a]m, having ridden in three hours a distance on which I have often expended eight.

Cool and breezy it was in my room, and cooler and breezier on the flat mud roof; and the lifting of some clouds in the far distance to the north, beyond the great sweep of the brown desert, revealed the mighty Elburz range, white with new-fallen snow. At Sinsin the next evening it was gloriously cold. There had been another heavy snowfall, and in the evening the Elburz range, over a hundred miles away, rose in unsullied whiteness like a glittering wall, and above it the colossal cone of Demavend, rose-flushed.

The routine of the day is simple and easy. I get the caravan off at eight, lie on the floor for an hour, gallop and walk for about half the march, rest for an hour in some place, where Mahboud, the soldier, always contrives to bring me a glass of tea, and then gallop and walk to the halting-place, where I rest for another hour till the caravan comes in. I now know exactly what to pay, and by giving small presents get on very easily.

There were many uncomfortable prophecies about the annoyances and rudenesses which a lady travelling alone would meet with, but so far not one has been fulfilled. How completely under such circumstances one has to trust one's fellow-creatures! There are no fastenings on the doors of these breezy rooms, and last night there was only the longitudinal half of a door, but I fell asleep, fearing nothing worse than a predatory cat.

The last two days' marches have been chiefly over stony wastes, or among low hills of red earth, gray gravel, and brown mud, with low serrated ranges beyond, and farther yet high hills covered with snow, after which the road leaves the hills and descends upon a pink plain, much of the centre of which is snow-white from saline efflorescence. The villages Kasseinabad, Nasrabad, and Aliabad are passed on the plain, with small fruit trees and barley surrounding them, and great mud caravanserais at intervals, only remarkable for the number of camels lying outside of them in rows facing each other. In the fresh keen air of evening the cone of Demavend was painted in white on the faint blue sky, reddening into beauty as the purple-madder shadows deepened over the yellow desert.

Tea made with saltish water, and salt sheep's milk, have been the only drawbacks of the six days' march.

Not far from Kashan we entered on a great alluvial plain formed of fine brown earth without a single stone--a prolific soil if it had water, as the fruit trees and abundant crops of young wheat round the villages show. So level, and on the whole so smooth, is this plain that it possesses the prodigy of a public conveyance, an omnibus with four horses abreast, which makes its laborious way with the aid of several attendants, who lift the wheels out of holes, prevent it from capsizing, and temporarily fill up the small irrigation ditches which it has to cross. Its progress is less "by leaps and bounds" than by jolts and rolls, and as my Arab horse bounded past I wondered that six men could be found to exchange the freedom of the saddle for such a jerky, stuffy box.

Five hundred yards from the gate of Kashan there is a telegraph station of the Indo-European line, where M. du Vignau and his wife expected me, and have received me with great kindness and hospitality. The electricians at these stations are allowed to receive guests in what is known as the "Inspectors' Room," and they exercise this liberty most kindly and generously. Many a weary traveller looks back upon the "Inspectors' Room" as upon an oasis in the desert of dirt; and though I cannot class myself just now with "weary travellers," I cordially appreciate the kindness which makes one "at home," and the opportunity of exchanging civilised ideas for a few hours.

I must not go beyond Kashan without giving a few words to the Persian section of the Indo-European telegraph line, one of the greatest marvels of telegraph construction, considering the nature of the country which the line traverses. Tihran is the centre of telegraphic control, and the residence of Colonel Wells, R.E., the Director, with a staff of twenty telegraphists, who work in relays day and night, and a Medical Officer. Julfa is another place of importance on the line, and at Shiraz there is another Medical Officer.

The prompt repair of the wires in cases of interruption is carefully arranged for. At suitable places, such as Kûm, Soh, Kashan, and other towns or villages from fifty to eighty miles apart, there are control or testing stations, each being in charge of a European telegraphist, who has under him two Persian horsemen, who have been well trained as linesmen. At stated hours the clerks place their instruments in circuit, and ascertain if all is right.

If this testing reveals any fault, it can be localised at once, and horsemen are despatched from the control stations on either side of it, with orders to ride rapidly along the line until they meet at the fault and repair it. As the telegraph crosses passes such as Kuhr[=u]d, at an altitude of over 8000 feet, the duties of both inspectors and linesmen are most severe, full not only of hardship but of danger in terrible winter storms and great depths of snow, yet on their ceaseless watchfulness and fidelity the safety of our Indian Empire may some day depend.

The skill brought to bear upon the manipulation of this Government line from the Gulf, and throughout the whole system of which it is a part, is wonderful. Messages from any part of the United Kingdom now reach any part of India in less than an hour and a half, and in only about one word in two hundred does even the most trifling mistake occur in transmission, a result all the more surprising when it is remembered that the telegrams are almost entirely either in code or cypher, and that over 1000 are transmitted in the course of a day.

Among these are the long despatches continually passing between the Viceroy of India and the India Office on vitally important subjects, and press telegrams of every noteworthy event. The "exhaustive summary" of Indian news which appears weekly in the _Times_, accompanied by a commentary on events, is an altogether un-padded telegram, and is transmitted with punctuation complete, and even with inverted commas for quotations.[31]

The English staff, numbering from fifty to sixty men, is scattered along a line of 1900 miles. Some of them are married, and most occupy isolated positions, so far as other Europeans are concerned. It is the universal testimony of Englishmen and Persians that the relations between them have been for many years of the most friendly character, full of good-will and mutual friendly offices, and that the continual contact brought about by the nature of the duties of the electricians has been productive not of aversion and distrust, but of cordial appreciation on both sides.

I. L. B.

FOOTNOTES:

[30] It is new to me, however, and may be new to a large proportion of the "untravelled many" for whom I write.

[31] Major-General Sir R. Murdoch Smith, K.C.M.G., late Director of the Persian section of the Indo-European telegraph, read a very interesting paper upon it before the Royal Scottish Geographical Society on December 13, 1888,--a _Sketch of the History of Telegraphic Communication between the United Kingdom and India_.

LETTER XI (_Continued_)

Kashan is one of the hottest places on the great Persian plateau, but has the rare luxury of a good water supply brought from a reservoir some distance off in the Kuhr[=u]d mountains. It has a much-diminished population, said now to number 30,000 souls. Much of it is in ruins, and much more is ruinous. It has a thriving colony of Jews. It is noted for its silks and velvets; but the modern productions are regarded by judges as degenerate. It is still famous for its work in copper and for its great copper bazar.

Silk produced at Resht is brought here to be spun and dyed. Then it is sent to Sultanabad to be woven into carpets, and is brought back again to have the pile cut by the sharp instruments used for cutting velvet pile, and the finished carpets are sent to Tihran for sale. They are only made in small sizes, and are more suitable for _portières_ than for laying on the floor. The colouring is exquisite, and the metallic sheen and lustre are unique. Silk carpets are costly luxuries. The price of even a fairly good one of very small size is £50, the silk alone costing £20.

Kashan is a great place for _curio_ buyers, who enlist the Jews in their service. There are some valuable antiques in this house--embroideries, carpet squares in silk, glass whose greenish colour and grace of form remind me of Venetian glass, enamels on porcelain, tiles, metal inlaying and damascening, pierced brasswork, and many other articles of _vertu_, the art of making which is either lost or has greatly degenerated.

It is unaccountable, but it is certain that the secret of producing the higher types of beauty in various arts, especially the Keramic, died out more than one hundred and fifty years ago, and that there are no circumstances of that date to account for its decease, except that it is recorded that when the Afghan conqueror Mahmoud destroyed Isfahan he massacred the designers of _reflêt_ tiles and other Keramic beauties, because they had created works which gave great umbrage to the Sunni sect to which he belonged.

These _reflêts_, for which collectors give fabulous sums, are intrinsically beautiful, both in the elegant conceptions of their designs and the fantastic richness of their colouring. There are designs in shades of brown on a lapis-lazuli ground, or in blue and green on a purple or umber ground, some of them star-shaped, with a pure white border composing the rest of the square, on which are inscribed phrases from the Koran. Looked at from above or frontwise, one exclaims, "What a beautiful tile!" but it is on turning it to the light that one's stereotyped phrases of admiration are exchanged for silence in presence of a singular iridescence which transfigures the tile, making it seem to gleam from within with golden purples and rosy gold.

The mosaic tiles are also beautiful, especially where the mosaic is on a lapis-lazuli or canary-yellow ground, neither of them reproducible at this day; and this also refers to other shades of blue, and to various reds and browns of exceeding richness, the art of making which has been lost for a century. But enough of art!

Possibly there may be a resurrection for Persian art; but in the meantime aniline dyes, tawdry European importations, and Western models without either grace or originality are doing their best to deprave it here, as elsewhere.

Roads from Tihran, Gulpaigan, Yezd, and Isfahan meet here, and it is something of what the Americans call "a distributing point," but it is a most uninviting place, in situation and general aspect, and its unsightly mud ruins, as in other Persian cities, are eloquent of nothing but paralysis and retrogression.

_Murcheh Khurt, Palm Sunday, March 30._--Three very pleasant marches, equal to seventy-six miles, have brought me here, and now Isfahan is only two days off, and it will end my palmy days of Persian travelling.

The first day's march from Kashan was only seven _farsakhs_ (the _parasang_ of Xenophon), twenty-eight miles, but it is equivalent to thirty-five, owing to the roughness of the road and the long ascent. There was scarcely any ground for galloping, the way was lost once, and the march took over eight hours.

The track, for only in places did it attain to the dignity of a bridle-road, lay for hours over a stony desert, and then entered the mountains, where I halted for an hour at the once magnificent caravanserai of Gaberabad, in a romantic situation, but falling fast into ruins, and deserted for no reason, so far as I could make out, but that people used to be robbed and have their throats cut there.

Beyond it the scenery became very wild, and the rocks and mountains highly coloured and snow-patched, and after ascending along the side of a stream and up a causewayed sort of stair past the reservoir which supplies Kashan with water, we entered the rising valley of Kuhr[=u]d, where the snow came nearly down to the road, and every slope was terraced and every level cultivated, and young wheat was springing and fruit orchards flourished, with green sward under the branches, and great poplars in picturesque groups towered above the lower woods.

We lost the way in the snow, and then took to the pebbly river as the safest track, and had an hour of fumbling in water and snow under apple and pear trees for the halting-place. The twilight of a frosty evening was coming on when we reached the village of Kuhr[=u]d--500 houses in terraces on a mountain side, and clustering round a fort on a projecting spur.

It is surrounded and interpenetrated by groves of walnut, apricot, cherry, peach, plum, apple, pear, poplar, and vine, with roses climbing over everything and planted in rows like vines, and through it passes a fair, bright stream of living water, a stream "whose waters fail not," turning the mountain valley into an oasis. But at that altitude of something like 7000 feet, the buds are only just swelling, and the crimson catkins of the hazels were the only reminder of spring. It is the one place that I should care to revisit.

The snow was piled in great heaps in the village and against the wall of the very wretched, ruinous _chapar khana_ in which I sought rest and shelter. Mahboud went up to the loft over the gateway, and came down looking dejected, mustering English enough to say, "No, no, mem Sahib!" I actually had to occupy one of the two gateway rooms, an inferior stable, without the smallest window hole, and no door except two unconnected boards with which one could cover a part of the doorway. Even when these were not put up a candle was necessary. It was freezing hard, but one could not have a fire because there was no smoke-hole. The walls were slimily and inkily black from the smoke of the fires of people who were less particular than I am. The dust and rubbish of the floor were swept into one corner. If one wanted a place to store boxes in, and looked into that room, one would exclaim dubiously, "Well, it _might_ do for glass and china!"

Mahboud put a rug on the floor and brought a bowl of delicious milk, and with an inverted saddle for a pillow I rested quite comfortably, being too tired to be impatient, till Mirza Yusuf arrived with my luxuries, and the news that the caravan could not get in for another hour, for that several of the mules had fallen and the loads were slipping round constantly. Indeed it was ten before I had dinner. It is very fortunate to have an attendant always cheerful, never fussy, caring nothing for personal comfort, and always ready to interpret.

The _ketchuda_ called with the usual proffer of service, "I am your sacrifice," etc., and induced me to buy some of the specialties of Kuhr[=u]d, rose-water in bottles without corks, and a paste made of rose-water, pounded walnuts, and sugar. The rose-water is not very clear, but it has much of the overpowering, lingering odour of attar of roses.

Kuhr[=u]d seems prosperous. Besides exporting large quantities of rose-water and walnut paste formed into blocks and done up in white skins, it sends wheat and fruit in abundance to Kashan.

Freedom, good sleep, and satisfactory travelling make up for all annoyances but vermin, and these are still hybernating. In that precarious privacy I slept soundly, and got the caravan off at eight the next morning--a glorious winter morning, the icy roads and the snow-covered valley glittering with frost crystals. We lost the way again among the pretty orchards, then got into a valley between high mud mountains, whose shapelessness is now judiciously concealed by snow from one to three feet deep, through which a track has been broken a foot wide. It is six miles from Kuhr[=u]d to the summit of the Kuhr[=u]d Pass, which is over 8000 feet, and it grew very cold and gray, and ragged masses of cloud swept angrily round the mountain-tops.

On the steepest part of the ascent it was extremely slippery, and the horses not being roughed slipped badly, and I was just fearing an accident to my borrowed horse and planning some method of dismounting when down he came on his nose and then on the side of his head, and fell several times again in his struggles to get up, his feet slipping from under him. When he did succeed in getting on his legs I was convinced that he had cut his knees, and slipped off him somehow to examine them; but my fears were groundless, and I had great difficulty in getting out of the drift into which I had descended, which was nearly up to my shoulders. His nose was bleeding a little, but that was all.

There was no way of remounting on a path a foot wide between walls of snow, and besides I was afraid of another accident, so I slipped the snaffle rein over his head and led him. It was horribly slippery, and having nails in my boots I fell several times just under his feet, but the sweet creature always stopped when I fell.