evidently afford it, but Abbas Khan had chosen something very
wretched, though it was upstairs, and had an extensive snow view.
Crumbling, difficult stairs at each end of a crumbling mud house led
to rooms which barely afforded a shelter, with a ruinous barn between,
where the servants, regardless of consequences, kept up a bonfire. A
man shovelled most of the snow out of my room, and tried to make a
fire but failed, as neither he nor I could stand the smoke produced by
the attempt. This imperfect shelter had a window-frame, with three out
of its four wooden panes gone, and a cracked door, which could only
ensure partial privacy by being laid against the posts from the outer
landing, which was a flat roof. The wall was full of cracks big enough
for a finger, through which the night wind rioted in a temperature 5 deg.
below zero.
There was nothing to sit upon, and I walked up and down for two hours,
half-frozen, watching the straggling line of the caravan as it crawled
along the valley, till the sunset flush changed into the chill
blue-gray of twilight. Hadji arrived with it, having broken his girth
after I left him. There was not much comfort after the severe march,
owing to the draughts and the smoke, but one is always hungry and
sleepy, and the hybernation of the insects makes up for any minor
discomforts. It was so cold that some water in a cup froze before I
could drink it, and the blanket over my face was hard frozen.
Kangawar was full of mourning. The bodies of two men and a boy, who
had perished on the plain while we were struggling up the pass, had
been brought in. This boy of twelve was "the only son of his mother
and she was a widow." He had started from Kangawar in the morning with
five asses laden with chopped straw to sell for her, and had miserably
perished. The two men were married, and had left families.
Kangawar is a town of a thousand people built below a high hill, on
some natural and artificial mounds. Some traditions regarding
Semiramis are localised there, and it is supposed to be on the site of
Pancobar, where she erected a temple to Anaitis or Artemis. Ruins of a
fortress, now snow-buried, occupy the crest of a hill above the town,
and there are other ruins, regarded by antiquaries as Grecian,
representing a temple or palace, "a vast building constructed of
enormous blocks of dressed stone." Of these remains I saw nothing but
some columns and a pilaster, which are built into the miserable mud
walls of a house near the bazar.
At night the muleteers were beseeching on their knees. They said that
they could not go on, that the caravan which had attempted to leave
Kangawar in the morning had put back with three corpses, and that they
and their mules would perish. In the morning it was for some time
doubtful whether they could be induced or bribed to proceed. The day
was fine and still, but they said that the snow was not broken. At
last they agreed to start if we would promise to return at the first
breath of wind!
Every resource against cold was brought out and put on. One eye was
all that was visible of the servants' faces. The _charvadars_ relied
on their felt coats and raw sheepskins, with the fur inside, roped
round their legs. There is danger of frost-bite even with all
precautions. In addition to double woollen underclothing I put on a
pair of thick Chitral socks over two pairs of woollen stockings, and
over these a pair of long, loose Afghan boots, made of sheepskin with
the fur inside. Over my riding dress, which is of flannel lined with
heavy homespun, I had a long homespun jacket, an Afghan sheepskin
coat, a heavy fur cloak over my knees, and a stout "regulation"
waterproof to keep out the wind. Add to this a cork helmet, a
fisherman's hood, a "six-ply" mask, two pairs of woollen gloves with
mittens and double gauntlets, and the difficulty of mounting and
dismounting for a person thus _swaddled_ may be imagined! The Persians
are all in cotton clothes.
However, though they have no "firesides," and no cheerful crackle and
blaze of wood, they have an arrangement by which they can keep
themselves warm for hours by the expenditure of a few handfuls of
animal fuel. The fire hole or _t[=a]nd[=u]r_ in the middle of the
floor is an institution. It is circular, narrows somewhat at the top
and bottom, has a flue leading to the bottom from the outside, and is
about three feet deep and two in diameter. It is smoothly lined with
clay inside.
Over this is the _karsi_ or platform, a skeleton wooden frame like an
inverted table, from two to five feet square, covered with blankets or
a thickly-wadded cotton quilt, which extends four or five feet beyond
it. Cushions are placed under this, and the women huddle under it all
day, and the whole family at night, and in this weather all day--the
firepot in the hole giving them comfortable warmth both for sleeping
and waking. They very rarely wash, and the _karsi_ is so favourable
for the development of vermin that I always hurry it out of the room
when I enter. So excellent and economical is the contrivance, that a
_t[=a]nd[=u]r_ in which the fire has not been replenished for eighteen
hours has still a genial heat.
It was a serious start, so terribly slippery in the heaped-up alleys
and uncovered bazars of Kangawar that several of the mules and men
fell. Outside the town was a level expanse of deep, wrinkled, drifted,
wavy, scintillating snow, unbroken except for a rut about a foot wide,
a deep long "mule ladder," produced by heavily-laden mules and asses
each stepping in its predecessor's footsteps, forming short, deep
corrugations, in which it is painful and tedious for horses or
lightly-laden animals to walk. For nine hours we marched through this
corrugated rut.
Leaving on the left the summer route to Tihran _via_ Hamadan, which is
said to have been blocked for twenty days, we embarked upon a
glittering plain covered with pure snow, varying in depth from two
feet on the level to ten and fifteen in the drifts, crossed by a
narrow and only slightly beaten track.
Ere long we came on solemn traces of the struggle and defeat of the
day before: every now and then a load of chopped straw thrown away,
then the deep snow much trampled, then the snow dug away and piled
round a small space, in which the _charvadars_ had tried to shelter
themselves from the wind as the shadows of death fell, then more
straw, and a grave under a high mound of snow; farther on some men
busy burying one of the bodies. The air was still, and the sun shone
as it had shone the day before on baffled struggles, exhaustion, and
death. The trampling of the snow near the track marked the place where
the caravan had turned, taking three out of the five bodies back to
Kangawar. The fury with which the wind had swept over the plain was
shown by the absolute level to which it had reduced the snow, the deep
watercourses being filled up with the drifts.
After crossing a brick bridge, and passing the nearly buried village
of Husseinabad, we rode hour after hour along a rolling track among
featureless hills, till in the last twilight we reached the village of
Pharipah, a low-lying place ("low-lying" must never be understood to
mean anything lower than 5000 feet) among some frozen irrigated lands
and watered gardens. I arrived nearly dead from cold, fatigue, and the
severe pains in the joints which are produced by riding nine hours at
a foot's pace in a temperature of 20 deg. My mule could only be urged on
by spurring, and all the men and animals were in a state of great
fatigue. My room was very cold, as much of one side was open to the
air, and a fire was an impossibility.
Except for the crossing of a pass with an altitude of 7500 feet, the
next day's route was monotonous, across plains, among mountains, all
pure white, the only incidents being that my chair was broken by the
fall of a mule, and that my mule and I went over our heads in a
snow-drift. The track was very little broken, and I was four hours in
doing ten miles.
Hamilabad is a village of about sixty mud hovels, and in common with
all these mountain hamlets has sloping covered ways leading to pens
under the house, where cattle, sheep, and goats spend much of the
winter in darkness and warmth.
I have a house, _i.e._ a mud room, to myself. These two days I have
had rather a severe chill, after getting in, including a shivering
lasting about two hours, perhaps owing to the severe fatigue; and I
was lying down with the blankets over my face and was just getting
warm when I heard much buzzing about me, and looking up saw the room
thronged with men, women, and children, just such a crowd as
constantly besieged our blessed Lord when the toilsome day full of
"the contradiction of sinners against Himself" was done, most of them
ill of "divers diseases and torments," smallpox, rheumatism, ulcers on
the cornea, abortive and shortened limbs, decay of the bones of the
nose, palate, and cheek, tumours, cancers, skin maladies, ophthalmia,
opaque films over the eyes, wounds, and many ailments too obscure for
my elementary knowledge. Nothing is more painful than to be obliged to
say that one cannot do anything for them.
I had to get up, and for nearly two hours was hearing their tales of
suffering, interpreted by Hadji with brutal frankness; and they
crowded my room again this morning. All I could do was to make various
ointments, taking tallow as the basis, drop lotion into some eyes,
give a few simple medicines, and send the majority sadly away. The
_sowar_, Abbas Khan, is responsible for spreading my fame as a
_Hak[=i]m_. He is being cured of a severe cough, and comes to my room
for medicine (in which I have no faith) every evening, a lean man with
a lean face, lighted with a rapacious astuteness, with a _kaftan_
streaming from his brow, except where it is roped round his shaven
skull, a zouave jacket, a skirt something like a kilt, but which
stands out like a ballet dancer's dress, all sorts of wrappings round
his legs, a coarse striped red shirt, a double cartridge-belt, and a
perfect armoury in his girdle of pistols and knives. He is a wit and a
rogue. Dogs, deprived of their usual shelter, shook my loose door at
intervals all night. This morning is gray, and looks like change.
_Nanej, Feb. 9._--It was thawing, and the march here was very soft
and splashy. The people are barbarous in their looks, speech, manners,
and ways of living, and have a total disregard of cleanliness of
person, clothing, and dwellings. Whether they are actually too poor to
have anything warmer than cotton clothing, or whether they have buried
hoards I do not know; but even in this severe weather the women of
this region have nothing on their feet, and their short blue cotton
trousers, short, loose, open jackets, short open chemises, and the
thin blue sheet or _chadar_ over their heads, are a mere apology for
clothing.
The journey yesterday was through rolling hills, enclosing level
plains much cultivated, with villages upon them mostly at a
considerable distance from the road. I passed through two, one larger
and less decayed than usual, but fearfully filthy, and bisected by a
foul stream, from which people were drinking and drawing water. Near
this is a lofty mound, a truncated cone, with some "Cyclopean" masonry
on its summit, the relics of a fire temple of the Magi. Another poorer
and yet filthier village was passed through, where a man was being
buried; and as I left Hamilabad in the morning, a long procession was
escorting a corpse to its icy grave, laid on its bedding on a bier,
both these deaths being from smallpox, which, though very prevalent,
is not usually fatal, and seldom attacks adults. Indeed, it is
regarded as a childish malady, and is cured by a diet of melons and by
profuse perspirations.
A higher temperature had turned the path to slush, and made the
crossing of the last plain very tedious. This is an abominable
village, and the thaw is revealing a state of matters which the snow
would have concealed; but it has been a severe week's journey, and I
am glad of Sunday's rest even here. It is a disheartening place. I
dismounted in one yard, in slush up to my knees, and from this
splashed into another, round which are stables, cowsheds, and rooms
which were vacated by the _ketchuda_ and his family, but only
partially, as the women not only left all their "things" in my room,
but had a _godown_ or storehouse through it, to which they resorted
continually. I felt ill yesterday, and put on a blister, which
rendered complete rest desirable; but it is not to be got. The room
filled with women as soon as I settled myself in it.
They told me at once that I could not have a fire unless I had it
under the _karsi_, that the smoke would be unbearable. When I asked
them to leave me to rest, they said, "There's no shame in having women
in the house." M---- came an hour later and cleared the room, but as
soon as he went away it filled again, and with men as well as women,
and others unscrupulously tore out the paper panes from the windows.
This afternoon I stayed in bed feeling rather ill, and about three
o'clock a number of women in blue sheets, with a very definite leader,
came in, arranged the _karsi_, filling the room with smoke, as a
preliminary, gathered themselves under the quilt, and sat there
talking loudly to each other. I felt myself the object of a focused
stare, and covered my head with a blanket in despair. Then more women
came in with tea-trays, and they all took tea and sat for another hour
or two talking and tittering, Hadji assuring me that they were doing
it out of kindness, because I was not well, and they thought it dull
for me alone! The room was again cleared, and I got up at dark, and
hearing a great deal of whispering and giggling, saw that they had
opened the door windows, and that a crowd was outside. When I woke
this morning a man was examining my clothes, which were hanging up.
They feel and pull my hair, finger all my things, and have broken all
the fine teeth out of my comb. They have the curiosity without the
gracefulness of the Japanese.
This is a house of the better sort, though the walls are not
plastered. A carpet loom is fixed into the floor with a half-woven
carpet upon it. Some handsome rugs are laid down. There are two
much-decorated marriage chests, some guns and swords, a quantity of
glass teacups and ornaments in the recesses, and coloured woodcuts of
the Russian Imperial family, here, as in almost every house, are on
the walls.
There is great rejoicing to-night "for joy that a man is born into the
world," the first-born of the _ketchuda's_ eldest son. In their
extreme felicity they took me to see the mother and babe. The room was
very hot, and crowded with relations and friends. The young mother was
sitting up on her bed on the floor and the infant lay beside her
dressed in swaddling clothes. She looked very happy and the young
father very proud. I added a small offering to the many which were
brought in for luck, and it was not rejected.
A sword was brought from my room, and with it the _mamache_ traced a
line upon the four walls, repeating a formula which I understood to
be, "I am making this tower for Miriam and her child."[20] I was
warned by Hadji not to look on the child or to admire him without
saying "Mashallah," lest I should bring on him the woe of the evil
eye. So greatly is it feared, that precautions are invariably taken
against it from the hour of birth, by bestowing amulets and charms
upon the child. A paragraph of the Koran, placed in a silk bag, had
already been tied round the infant's neck. Later, he will wear another
bag round his arm, and turquoise or blue beads will be sewn upon his
cap.
If a visitor admires a child without uttering the word _Mashallah_,
and the child afterwards falls sick, the visitor at once is regarded
as answerable for the calamity, and the relations take a shred of his
garment, and burn it in a brazier with cress seed, walking round and
round the child as it burns.
Persian mothers are regarded as convalescent on the third day, when
they go to the _hammam_ to perform the ceremonies required by Moslem
law. A boy is weaned at the end of twenty-six months and a girl at the
end of twenty-four. If possible, on the weaning day the child is
carried to the mosque, and certain devotions are performed. The
weaning feast is an important function, and the relations and friends
assemble, bringing presents, and the child in spite of his reluctance
is forced to partake of the food.
At the earliest possible period the _mamache_ pronounces in the
infant's ear the Shiah profession of faith: "God is God, there is but
one God, and Mohammed is the Prophet of God, and Ali is the Lieutenant
of God." A child becomes a Moslem as soon as this _Kelemah Islam_ has
been spoken into his ear; but a ceremony attends the bestowal of his
name, which resembles that in use among the Buddhists of Tibet on
similar occasions.
Unless the father be very poor indeed, he makes a feast for his
friends on an auspicious day, and invites the village _mollahs_.
Sweetmeats are solemnly eaten after the guests have assembled. Then
the infant, stiffened and mummied in its swaddling clothes, is brought
in, and is laid on the floor by one of the _mollahs_. Five names are
written on five slips of paper, which are placed between the leaves of
the Koran, or under the edge of the carpet. The first chapter of the
Koran is then read. One of the slips is then drawn at random, and a
_mollah_ takes up the child, and pronounces in its ear the name found
upon it, after which he places the paper on its clothes.
The relations and friends give it presents according to their means,
answering to our christening gifts, and thereafter it is called by the
name it has received. Among men's names there is a preponderance of
those taken from the Old Testament, among which Ibrahim, Ismail,
Suleiman, Yusuf, and Moussa are prominent. Abdullah, Mahmoud, Hassan,
Raouf, Baba Houssein, Imam are also common, and many names have the
suffix of Ali among the Shiahs. Fatmeh is a woman's name, but
girl-children usually receive the name of some flower or bird, or
fascinating quality of disposition or person.
The journey is beginning to tell on men and animals. One of the Arab
horses has had a violent attack of pain from the cold, and several of
the men are ailing and depressed.
_Dizabad, Feb. 11._--Nanej is the last village laid down on any map on
the route we are taking for over a hundred miles, _i.e._ until we
reach Kum, though it is a caravan route, and it does not appear that
any Europeans have published any account of it. Just now it is a
buried country, for the snow is lying from one to four feet deep. It
is not even possible to pronounce any verdict on the roads, for they
are simply deep ruts in the snow, with "mule ladders." The people say
that the plains are irrigated and productive, and that the hills
pasture their sheep and cattle; and they all complain of the exactions
of local officials. There is no variety in costume, and very little in
dwellings, except as to size, for they are all built of mud or
sun-dried bricks, within cattle yards, and have subterranean pens for
cattle and goats. The people abound in diseases, specially of the eyes
and bones.
The salient features of the hills, if they have any, are rounded off
by snow, and though many of them rise to a great height, none are
really impressive but Mount Elwand, close to Hamadan. The route is
altogether hilly, but the track pursues valleys and low passes as much
as possible, and is never really steep.
Yesterday we marched twenty-four miles in eight hours without any
incident, and the "heavy division" took thirteen hours, and did not
come in till ten at night! There are round hills, agglomerated into
ranges, with easy passes, the highest 7026 feet in altitude, higher
summits here and there in view, the hills encircling level plains,
sprinkled sparsely with villages at a distance from the road, denoted
by scrubby poplars and willows; sometimes there is a _kanaat_ or
underground irrigation channel with a line of pits or shafts, but
whatever there was, or was not, it was always lonely, grim, and
desolate. The strong winds have blown some of the hillsides bare, and
they appear in all their deformity of shapeless mounds of black
gravel, or black mud, with relics of last year's thistles and
euphorbias upon them. So great is the destitution of fuel that even
now people are out cutting the stalks of thistles which appear above
the snow.
As the hours went by, I did rather wish for the smashed _kajawehs_,
especially when we met the ladies of a governor's _haram_, to the
number of thirty, reclining snugly in pairs, among blankets and
cushions, in panniers with tilts, and curtains of a thick material,
dyed Turkey red. The cold became very severe towards evening.
The geographical interest of the day was that we crossed the watershed
of the region, and have left behind the streams which eventually reach
the sea, all future rivers, however great their volume, or impetuous
their flow, disappearing at last in what the Americans call "sinks,"
but which are known in Persia as _kavirs_, usually salt swamps. Near
sunset we crossed a bridge of seven pointed arches with abutments
against a rapid stream, and passing a great gaunt caravanserai on an
eminence, and a valley to the east of the bridge with a few villages
giving an impression of fertility, hemmed in by some shapely
mountains, we embarked on a level plain, bounded on all sides by
hills so snowy that not a brown patch or outbreak of rock spotted
their whiteness, and with villages and caravanserais scattered thinly
over it. On the left, there are the extensive ruins of old Dizabad,
and a great tract of forlorn graves clustering round a crumbling
_imamzada_.
As the sun sank the distant hills became rose-flushed, and then one by
one the flush died off into the paleness of death, and in the
gathering blue-grayness, in desolation without sublimity, in
ghastliness, impressive but only by force of ghastliness, and in
benumbing cold, we rode into this village, and into a yard encumbered
with mighty piles of snow, on one side of which I have a wretched
room, though the best, with two doors, which do not shut, but when
they are closed make it quite dark--a deep, damp, cobwebby, dusty,
musty lair like a miserable eastern cowshed.
I was really half-frozen and quite benumbed, and though I had plenty
of blankets and furs, had a long and severe chill, and another to-day.
M---- also has had bad chills, and the Afghan orderly is ill, and
moaning with pain in the next room. Hadji has fallen into a state of
chronic invalidism, and is shaking with chills, his teeth chattering,
and he is calling on Allah whenever I am within hearing.
The chilly dampness and the rise in temperature again may have
something to do with the ailments, but I think that we Europeans are
suffering from the want of nourishing food. Meat has not been
attainable for some days, the fowls are dry and skinny, and milk is
very scarce and poor. I cannot eat the sour wafers which pass for
bread, and as Hadji cannot boil rice or make flour porridge, I often
start in the morning having only had a cup of tea. I lunch in the
saddle on dates, the milk in the holsters having been frozen lately;
then is the time for finding the value of a double peppermint
lozenge!
Snow fell heavily last night, and as the track has not been broken,
and the _charvadars_ dared not face it, we are detained in this
miserable place, four other caravans sharing our fate. The pros and
cons about starting were many, and Abbas Khan was sent on horseback to
reconnoitre, but he came back like Noah's dove, reporting that it was
a trackless waste of snow outside. It is a day of rest, but as the
door has to be open on the snow to let in light, my hands are benumbed
with the damp cold. Still, a bowl of Edwards' desiccated soup--the
best of all travelling soups--has been very reviving, and though I
have had a severe chill again, I do not mean to succumb. I do not
dwell on the hardships, but they are awful. The soldiers and servants
all have bad coughs, and dwindle daily. The little orderly is so ill
to-day that we could not have gone on even had the track been broken.
_Saruk, Feb. 12._--Unladen asses, followed by unladen mules, were
driven along to break the track this morning, and as two caravans
started before us, it was tolerable, though very deep. The solitude
and desolation were awful. At first the snow was somewhat thawed, but
soon it became immensely deep, and we had to plunge through hollows
from which the beasts extricated themselves with great difficulty and
occasionally had to be unloaded and reloaded.