the road to Hamadan, which was our possible route, had been blocked
for some days. The temperature has now risen to 31 deg., with a bitter
wind, and much snow in the sky. The journey does not promise well. Two
of the servants have been ill. I am not at all well, and the reports
of the difficulties farther on are rather serious. These things are
certain,--that the marches are very long, and without any possibility
of resting _en route_ owing to mud or snow, and that the food and
accommodation will be horrible.
Hadji is turning out very badly. He has fever now, poor fellow, and is
even more useless than usual. Abdul Rahim does not like him to
interpret, and calls him "the savage." He does no work, and is both
dirty and dishonest. The constant use of pious phrases is not a good
sign either of Moslem or Christian. I told him this morning that I
could not eat from so dirty a plate. "God is great," he quietly
answered. He broke my trestle bed by not attending to directions, and
when I pointed out what he had done, he answered, "God knows all, God
ordains all things." It is really exasperating.
It is necessary to procure an additional outfit for the journey--a
slow process--masks lined with flannel, sheepskin bags for the feet,
the thick felt coats of the country for all the servants, additional
blankets, _kajawehs_ for me, and saddle-horses. The marches will
frequently be from twenty to thirty miles in length, and the fatigue
of riding them at a foot's pace when one cannot exchange riding for
walking will be so great that I have had a pair of _kajawehs_ made in
which to travel when I am tired of the mule. These panniers are oblong
wooden boxes, eighteen inches high, with hoops over them for curtains.
One hangs on each side of the mule on a level with his back, and they
are mounted, _i.e._ they are scrambled into from the front by a
ladder, which is carried between them. Most women and some men travel
in them. They are filled up with quilts and cushions. The mule which
is to carry them is a big and powerful animal, and double price is
charged for him.
Horses are very good and cheap here. A pure Arab can be bought for
L14, and a cross between an Arab and a Kurdish horse--a breed noted
for endurance--for even less. But to our thinking they are small,
never exceeding fifteen hands. The horses of the Kirmanshah province
are esteemed everywhere, and there is a steady drain upon them for the
Indian market. The stud of three horses requires a groom, and Abdul
Rahim is sending a _sowar_, who looks a character, to attend us to
Tihran. A muleteer, remarkable in appearance and beauty, and twelve
fine mules have been engaged. The _sowar_ and several other men have
applied to me for medicine, having fearful coughs, etc., but I have
not been fortunate enough to cure them, as their maladies chiefly
require good feeding, warm bedding, and poultices, which are
unattainable. It is pitiable to see the poor shivering in their thin
cotton clothes in such weather. The men make shift with the seamless
felt coats--more cloaks than coats, with long bag-like sleeves
tapering to the size of a glove but with a slit midway, through which
the hands can be protruded when need arises. The women have no outer
garment but the thin cotton _chadar_.
I have tried to get a bed made, but there is no wood strong enough for
the purpose, and the bazars cannot produce any canvas.
_Sannah, Feb. 5._--Yesterday we were to have started at nine, but the
usual quarrelling about loads detained us till 10.30, so that it was
nearly dark when we reached the end of the first stage of a three
weeks' journey. From the house roof the prospect was most dismal. It
was partly thawing, and through the whiteness of the plain ran a brown
trail with sodden edges, indicating mud. The great mass of the
Jabali-Besitun, or Behistun, or Behishtan, though on the other side of
the plain, seemed actually impending over the city, with its great
black rock masses, too steep to hold the snow, and the Besitun
mountain itself, said to be twenty-four miles away, looming darkly
through gray snow clouds, looked hardly ten. Our host had sent men on
to see if the landau could take me part of the way at least; but their
verdict was that the road was impassable.
After much noise the caravan got under way, but it was soon evident
that the fine mules we had engaged had been changed for a poor,
sore-backed set, and that the fine saddle-mule I was to have had was
metamorphosed into a poor weak creature, which began to drop his leg
from the shoulder almost as soon as we were outside the walls, and on
a steep bridge came down on his nose with a violent fall, giving me a
sharp strain, and fell several times afterwards; indeed, the poor
animal could scarcely keep on his legs during the eight hours' march.
Hadji rode in a _kajaweh_, balanced by some luggage, and was to keep
close to me, but when I wanted to change my broken-down beast for a
pannier he was not to be seen, then or afterwards, and came in late.
The big mule had fallen, he was bruised, the _kajawehs_ were smashed
to pieces, and were broken up for firewood, and I am now without any
means of getting any rest from riding! "It's the pace that kills." In
snow and mud gallops are impossible, and three miles an hour is good
going.
An hour from Kirmanshah the road crosses the Karasu by a good brick
bridge, and proceeds over the plain for many miles, keeping the
Besitun range about two miles on the left, and then passes over
undulating ground to the Besitun village. Two or three large villages
occur at a distance from the road, now shut in, and about eight miles
from Besitun there are marble columns lying on the ground among some
remains of marble walls, now only hummocks in the snow.
The road was churned into deep mud by the passage of animals, and the
snow was too deep to ride in. My mule lost no opportunity of tumbling
down, and I felt myself a barbarian for urging him on. Hills and
mountains glistened in all directions. The only exception to the
general whiteness was Piru, the great rock mass of Besitun, which ever
loomed blackly overhead through clouds and darkness, and never seemed
any nearer. It was very solitary. I met only a caravan of carpets, and
a few men struggling along with laden asses.
It was the most artistic day of the whole journey, much cloud flying
about, mountains in indigo gloom, or in gray, with storm clouds round
their heads, or pure white, with shadows touched in with cobalt, while
peaks and ridges, sun-kissed, gleamed here and there above indigo and
gray. Not a tree or even bush, on them or on the plain, broke the
monotony after a summer palace of the Shah, surrounded by poplars, was
passed. There is plenty of water everywhere.
As the sun was stormily tinging with pink the rolling snow-clouds here
and there, I halted on the brow of a slope under the imposing rock
front of Besitun to wait for orders. It was wildly magnificent: the
huge precipice of Piru, rising 1700 feet from the level, the mountains
on both sides of the valley approaching each other, and behind Piru a
craggy ravine, glorified here and there by touches of amber and pink
upon the clouds which boiled furiously out of its depths. In the
foreground were a huge caravanserai with a noble portal, a solitary
thing upon the snow, not a dwelling, but offering its frigid
hospitality to all comers; a river with many windings, and the ruinous
hovels of Besitun huddled in the mud behind. An appalling view in the
wild twilight of a winter evening; and as the pink died out, a
desolate ghastliness fell upon it. As I waited, all but worn out by
the long march, the tumbling mule, and the icy wind, I thought I
should like never to hear the deep chimes of a Persian caravan, or see
the huge portal of a Persian caravanserai any more. These are cowardly
emotions which are dispelled by warmth and food, but at that moment
there was not much prospect of either.
Through seas of mud and by mounds of filth we entered Besitun, a most
wretched village of eighteen hovels, chiefly ruinous, where we
dismounted in the mixed snow and mud of a yard at a hovel of three
rooms vacated by a family. It was a better shelter than could have
been hoped for, though after a fire was made, which filled the room
with smoke, I had to move from place to place to avoid the drip from
the roof.
Hadji said he was ill of fever, and seemed like an idiot; but the orderly
said that the illness was shammed and the stupidity assumed in order not
to work. I told him to put the mattress on the bed; "Pour water on the
mattress," he replied. I repeated, "Put--the--mattress--on--the--bed,"
to which he replied, "Put the mattress into water!" I said if he felt
too ill for his work he might go to bed. "God knows," he answered.
"Yes, knows that you are a lazy, good-for-nothing, humbugging
brute"--a well-timed objurgation from M----, which elicited a
prolonged "_Ya Allah!_" but produced no effect, as the tea and
_chapatties_ were not relatively but absolutely cold the next morning.
The next day dawned miserably, and the daylight when it came was only
a few removes from darkness, yet it was enough to bring out the
horrors of that wretched place, and the dirt and poverty of the
people, who were a prey to skin diseases. Many readers will remember
that Sir H. Rawlinson considers that there are good geographical and
etymological reasons for identifying Besitun with the Baghistan, or
Place of Gardens of the Greeks, and with the famous pleasure-grounds
which tradition ascribes to Semiramis. But of these gardens not a
trace remains. A precipitous rock, smoothed at its lower part, a
vigorous spring gushing out at the foot of the precipice, two tablets,
one of which, at a height of over 300 feet, visible from the road but
inaccessible, is an Achaemenian sculpture portraying the majesty of
Darius, with about a thousand lines of cuneiform writing, are all that
survive of the ancient splendours of Besitun, with the exception of
some buttresses opposite the rock, belonging to a vanished Sasanian
bridge over the Gamasiab, and some fragments of other buildings of the
Sasanian epoch. These deeply interesting antiquities have been
described and illustrated by Sir H. Rawlinson, Flandin and Coste, and
others.
It has been a severe day. It was so unpromising that a start was only
decided on after many pros and cons. Through dark air small flakes of
snow fell sparsely at intervals from a sky from which all light had
died out. Gusts of icy wind swept down every gorge. Huge ragged masses
of cloud drifted wildly round the frowning mass of Piru. Now and then
the gusts ceased, and there was an inauspicious calm.
I rode a big mule not used to the bit, very troublesome and mulish at
first, but broken in an hour. A clear blink revealed the tablets, but
from their great altitude the tallest of the figures only looked two
feet high. There is little to see on this march even under favourable
circumstances. A few villages, the ruined fort of Hassan Khan, now
used as a caravanserai, on a height, the windings of the Gamasiab, and
a few canals crossed by brick bridges, represent its chief features.
Impressions of a country received in a storm are likely to be
incorrect, but they were pleasurable. Everything seemed on a grand
scale: here desolate plateaus pure white, there high mountains and
tremendous gorges, from which white mists were boiling up--everything
was shrouded in mystery--plain prose ceased to be for some hours.
The others had to make several halts, so I left the "light division"
and rode on alone. It became dark and wild, and presently the surface
of the snow began to move and to drift furiously for about a foot
above the ground. The wind rose to a gale. I held my hat on with one
half-frozen hand. My mackintosh cape blew inside out, and struck me
such a heavy blow on the eyes that for some time I could not see and
had to trust to the mule. The wind rose higher; it was furious, and
the drift, not only from the valley but from the mountain sides, was
higher than my head, stinging and hissing as it raced by. It was a
"blizzard," a brutal snow-laden north-easter, carrying fine, sharp,
hard-frozen snow crystals, which beat on my eyes and blinded them.
After a short experience of it my mule "turned tail" and needed
spurring to make him face it. I fought on for an hour, crossed what
appeared to be a bridge, where there were a few mud hovels, and
pressed on down a narrower valley. The blizzard became frightful;
from every ravine gusts of storm came down, sweeping the powdery snow
from the hillsides into the valley; the mountains were blotted out,
the depression in the snow which erewhile had marked the path was
gone, I could not even see the mule's neck, and he was floundering in
deep snow up to the girths; the hiss of the drift had increased to a
roar, the violence of the storm produced breathlessness and the
intense cold numbness. It was dangerous for a solitary traveller, and
thinking that M---- would be bothered by missing one of the party
under such circumstances, I turned and waited under the lee of a
ruinous mud hovel for a long, long time till the others came up--two
of the men having been unhorsed in a drift.
In those hovels there were neither accommodation nor supplies, and we
decided to push on. It was never so bad again. The wind moderated, wet
snow fell heavily, but cleared off, and there was a brilliant blue
heaven with heavy sunlit cloud-wreaths, among which colossal mountain
forms displayed themselves, two peaks in glorious sunlight, high, high
above a whirling snow-cloud, which was itself far above a great
mountain range below. There were rifts, valleys, gorges, naked, nearly
perpendicular rocks, the faces of mountains, half of which had fallen
down in the opposite direction, a snow-filled valley, a winding river
with brief blue stretches, a ruined fort on an eminence, a sharp turn,
a sudden twilight, and then another blizzard far colder than the last,
raging down a lateral ravine, up which, even through the blinding
drift, were to be seen, to all seeming higher than mountains of this
earth, the twin peaks of Shamran lighted by the sun. I faced the
blizzard for some time, and then knowing that Hadji and the cook, who
were behind me, would turn off to a distant village, all trace of a
track having disappeared, I rode fully a mile back and waited half an
hour for them. They were half-frozen, and had hardly been able to urge
their mules, which were lightly laden, through the snow, and Hadji was
groaning "_Ya Allah!_"
The blizzard was over and the sky almost cloudless, but the mercury
had fallen to 18 deg., and a keen wind was still blowing the powdery snow
to the height of a foot. I sent the two men on in front, and by dint
of calling to them constantly, kept them from getting into drifts of
unknown depth. We rode up a rising plateau for two hours--a plateau of
deep, glittering, blinding, trackless snow, giving back the sunshine
in millions of diamond flashings. Through all this region thistles
grow to a height of four feet, and the only way of finding the track
was to look out for a space on which no withered thistle-blooms
appeared above the snow.
This village of Sannah lies at an altitude of about 5500 feet, among
poplar plantations and beautiful gardens, in which fine walnut trees
are conspicuous. Though partly ruinous it is a flourishing little
place, its lands being abundantly watered by streams which run into
the Gamasiab. It is buried now in snow, and the only mode of reaching
it is up the bed of a broad sparkling stream among the gardens. The
_sowar_ met us here, the navigation being difficult, and the "light
division" having come up, we were taken to the best house in the
village, where the family have vacated two rooms, below the level of a
yard full of snow. The plateau and its adjacent mountains were flushed
with rose as we entered Sannah, and as soon as the change to the
pallor of death came on the mercury raced down to zero outside, and it
is only 6 deg. in the room in which I am writing.
There is a large caravanserai at the entrance to Sannah, and I suspect
that the _sowar_ in choosing private quarters bullies the _ketchuda_
(headman) and throws the village into confusion, turning the women and
children out of the rooms, the owners, though they get a handsome sum
for the accommodation, having to give him an equally handsome
_modakel_.
After nearly nine hours of a crawling pace and exposure to violent
weather, I suffered from intense pain in my joints, and was dragged
and lifted in and put into a chair. I write "put," for I was nearly
helpless, and had to take a teaspoonful of whisky in warm milk. While
the fire was being made two women, with a gentle kindliness which won
my heart, chafed my trembling, nearly frozen hands with their own,
with kindly, womanly looks, which supplied the place of speech.
I lay down under a heap of good blankets, sorry to see them in thin
cotton clothes, and when I was less frozen observed my room and its
grotesquely miserable aspect, "the Savage" never taking any trouble to
arrange it. There are no windows, and the divided door does not shut
by three inches. A low hole leads into the granary, which is also the
fowl-house, but the fowls have no idea of keeping to their own
apartment. Two sheep with injured legs lie in a corner with some
fodder beside them. A heap of faggots, the bed placed diagonally to
avoid the firehole in the floor, a splashed tarpaulin on which Hadji
threw down the saddle and bridle plastered with mud, and all my
travelling gear, a puddle of frozen water, a plough, and some ox
yokes, an occasional gust of ashes covering everything, and clouds of
smoke from wood which refuses to do anything but smoke, are the
luxuries of the halt. The house is full of people, and the women come
in and out without scruple, and I am really glad to see them, though
it is difficult to rouse Hadji from his opium pipe and coffee, and his
comfortable lounge by a good fire, to interpret for them.
The day's experiences remind me of the lines--
"Bare all he could endure,
And bare not always well."
But tired and benumbed as I am I much prefer a march with excitements
and difficulties to the monotony of splashing through mud in warm
rain.
_Hamilabad, Feb. 7._--The next morning opened cloudless, with the
mercury at 18 deg., which was hardly an excuse for tea and _chapatties_
being quite cold. I was ready much too early, and the servants having
given out that I am a _Hak[=i]m_, my room was crowded with women and
children, all suffering from eye diseases and scrofula, five women not
nearly in middle life with cataract advanced in both eyes, and many
with incurved eyelids, the result of wood smoke. It was most painful
to see their disappointment when I told them that it would need time
to cure some of them, and that for others I could do nothing. Could I
not stay? they pleaded. I could have that room and milk and eggs--the
best they had. "And they lifted up their voices and wept." I felt like
a brute for leaving them. The people there showed much interest in our
movements, crowding on the roofs to see our gear, and the start.
The order of march now is--light division, three mules with an
orderly, Hadji, and the cook upon them, the two last carrying what is
absolutely necessary for the night in case the heavy division cannot
get on. M---- and an orderly, the _sowar_, Abbas Khan, another who is
changed daily, the light division and I, sometimes start together; but
as the others are detained by work on the road, I usually ride on
ahead with the two servants.
To write that we all survived the march of that day is strange, when
the same pitiless blast or "demon wind," blowing from "the roof of the
world"--the Pamir desert, made corpses of five men who started with a
caravan ahead of us that morning. We had to climb a long ascending
plateau for 1500 feet, to surmount a pass. The snow was at times three
feet deep, and the tracks even of a heavy caravan which crossed before
us were effaced by the drift in a few minutes.
A sun without heat glared and scintillated like an electric light,
white and unsympathetic, out of a pitiless sky without a cloud. As
soon as we emerged from Sannah the "demon wind" seized on us--a
steady, blighting, searching, merciless blast, no rise or fall, no
lull, no hope. Steadily and strongly it swept, at a temperature of 9 deg.,
across the glittering ascent--swept mountain-sides bare; enveloped us
at times in glittering swirls of powdery snow, which after biting and
stinging careered over the slopes in twisted columns; screeched down
gorges and whistled like the demon it was, as it drifted the light
frozen snow in layers, in ripples, in waves, a cruel, benumbing,
blinding, withering invisibility!
The six woollen layers of my mask, my three pairs of gloves, my
sheepskin coat, fur cloak, and mackintosh piled on over a swaddling
mass of woollen clothing, were as nothing before that awful blast. It
was not a question of comfort or discomfort, or of suffering more or
less severe, but of life or death, as the corpses a few miles ahead of
us show. I am certain that if it had lasted another half-hour I too
should have perished. The torture of my limbs down to my feet, of my
temples and cheekbones, the anguish and uselessness of my hands, from
which the reins had dropped, were of small consequence compared with a
chill which crept round my heart, threatening a cessation of work.
There were groans behind me; the cook and Hadji had rolled off into
the snow, where Hadji was calling on Him "who is not far from every
one of us." M---- was on foot. His mask was frozen hard. He was using
a scientific instrument, and told his orderly, an Afghan, a smart
little "_duffadar_" of a crack Indian _corps_, to fasten a strap. The
man replied sadly, "I can't, Sahib." His arms and hands were useless.
My mask was frozen to my lips. The tears extorted from my eyes were
frozen. I was so helpless, and in such torture, that I would gladly
have lain down to die in the snow. The mercury fell to 4 deg.
After fighting the elements for three hours and a half, we crossed the
crest of the pass at an altitude of 7000 feet, to look down upon a
snow world stretched out everywhere, pure, glistering, awful;
mountains rolling in snowy ranges, valleys without a trace of man, a
world of horror, glittering under a mocking sun.
Hadji, with many pious ejaculations, gasped out that he was dying (in
fact, for some time all speech had been reduced to a gasp); but when
we got over the crest there was no more wind, and all the benumbed
limbs resumed sensation, through an experience of anguish.
The road to Kangawar lies through a broad valley, which has many
streams. Among the mountains which encompass it are the Kuh-i-Hassan,
Boka, the Kuh-i-Paran, and the Kuh-i-Bozah. I rode on with the two
servants, indulging in no higher thoughts than of the comfort I should
have in lying down, when just in front of me Hadji turned a
somersault, my alpenstock flying in one direction and the medicine
chest in another, while he lay motionless, flat on his back with all
his limbs stretched out, just as soldiers who have been shot lie in
pictures. In getting to him my mule went down in a snow-drift, out of
which I extricated him with difficulty. I induced Hadji, who said his
back was broken, and was groaning and calling on Allah, to get up, and
went on to secure his mule, which had the great pack-saddle under its
body, and was kicking with all its might at my bed and "hold-all,"
which were between its hind legs, and succeeded in catching and
holding it till Hadji came up. I told him to unfasten the surcingle,
for the animal was wild with the things among its legs, and he wrung
his hands and beat his breast, exclaiming, "God is great! God knows I
shall never see Bushire again!" and was quite helpless. Seeing a
caravan of asses approaching, I rode on as fast as I could to the
well-situated little town of Kangawar, expecting him to follow
shortly. At present the entrance into Kangawar is up the bed of a
stream.