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 Kum, 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 _portieres_ 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 L50, the silk
alone costing L20.
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 _reflet_ tiles and other Keramic
beauties, because they had created works which gave great umbrage to
the Sunni sect to which he belonged.
These _reflets_, 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.
From the top there was a truly fearful view of "blackness, darkness,
and tempest," inky mists, white mountain-tops showing momentarily
through them to be lost again, and great sheets of very deep snow.
Soon the gathering storm burst, a "blizzard" in which the snow was
quite blinding, snow drifting and hissing as it went by, the wind
tempestuous, mountains, valleys, path obliterated, even the soldier in
front of me constantly lost to sight. An hour of this and I could walk
no more, and somehow scrambled into the saddle.
At the foot of the descent the sky cleared, the sun shone, and we
picked up the caravan, which had had rather a hard time. The
succeeding route was through an absolutely uninhabited and
uninhabitable country, clay and mud hills, purple, red, gray, pink,
brown, an utter desolation, till we came in sight of the good-sized
and at a distance imposing-looking village of Soh in a keen wind with
frequent snow showers. Soh is a telegraph testing station.
The electrician was absent, but had kindly left directions that I was
to be received, and I found a most comfortable guest-room quite ready.
A little later an Englishman riding _chapar_ to Isfahan threw a packet
of English letters in at my door--a delightful surprise, which made
havoc of the rest of the evening.
The desolation of this part of the route may be judged of from the
fact that except the village of Kuhr[=u]d there is not an inhabited
house for forty-six miles. The country traversed reminds me much of
the least interesting part of the route from Lesser Tibet into Kulu.
Yesterday morning there was ice, and the roads were very slippery on
the gradual descent from the plain which opens out after passing
Bideshk, the _chapar_ station, an hour from Soh. The twenty-four
miles' ride over this gravelly waste, quite uninhabited, was very
pleasant, as it was possible to gallop much of the way, and besides
the beauty of the atmospheric colouring the mirage occurring in most
remarkable forms rendered monotony impossible.
There were no caravans on the road, but I met several dervishes, and
there is one here to whom I have given what he demanded--a night's
lodging. He carries a large carved almsholder; and the panther skin on
his shoulders, the knotted club, and his lean, hungry, fanatical face
give him a dangerous look. All I have seen on this march have worn
long matted bushy hair, often covering their shoulders, an axe in the
girdle, and peculiar turbans decorated with phrases from the Koran.
They are the "mendicant friars" of Persia, and are under vows of
poverty. Some are said to be learned; but they object to discussing
religious matters with infidels, and almost nothing is known as to
their beliefs. They hold universally the sanctity of idleness, and the
duty of being supported by the community. The lower classes hold them
in reverence, and the upper, though they are apt to loathe them, treat
them with great respect, for fear of laying themselves open to the
charge of laxity in religious matters.
[Illustration: A DERVISH.]
Many of them deal in charms, and are consulted as astrologers. Some
are professed tellers of stories, to which I am told no European could
degrade himself by listening, but which are most palatable to a
village audience; and at this moment this unwelcome guest of mine has
a crowd listening to a narrative partly told and partly acted.
They are credited with many vices, among the least of which are hazy
ideas as to mine and thine, opium and bhang smoking to excess, and
drunkenness.
They have recognised heads or chiefs, to whom they show great
deference. One of their vows is that of obedience; and besides paying
to the chief a part of the alms they receive, he gives them orders as
to the houses they are to infest, and though the nuisance is not so
common as formerly, a dervish at the door is still a sign of being
great or rich, or both. Their cries, and their rude blasts on the
buffalo horn, which is a usual part of their equipment, are most
obnoxious. In the larger towns, such as Kum and Kirmanshah, there are
shops for the sale of their outfit--the tiger and panther skins, the
axes, the knotted clubs, the almsbowls, etc.
Some are respectable, and enjoy much consideration, and I hope that
many even of those whom a careful writer has called "disgusting
vagabonds" are not humbugs; but the presumption is so much the other
way that I am always glad when the ground admits of galloping past
them, otherwise the dervish comes forward, with his knotted club much
_en evidence_, with many compliments and good wishes, or else silently
extends his almsholder, ejaculating _Huk_ ("my right"). I usually have
the means of appeasing, if not of satisfying him, but on the rare
occasions when I have had no money the yells and maledictions have
been awful.
The light and profane use of the Divine name is universal. The
dervishes curse, but every one uses the name _Allah_ wherever they can
bring it in. The _Ya Allah_, as an expression of fatigue, or
discontent, or interest, or nothing, is heard all day, and the boy who
drives a cow, or a team, or a mule in a caravan, cries _Ya Allah_
incessantly as an equivalent of "go along," and the gardener pushing
his spade into the ground, the chopper with every blow of the axe, the
labourer throwing up bricks, ejaculates the same. _Mashallah_,
_Inshallah_, interlard all conversation. When men are building, the
perpetual sing-song of phrases such as these is heard, "Brother, in
God's name toss me a brick," the other replying, "Brother, in God's
name here is a brick."
The vocabulary of abuse is also very large, and often involves serious
reflections on the female relatives of the person abused. I hear such
harmless phrases as "son of a burnt father," "son of a dog,"
"offspring of a pig," etc., on all occasions.
Murcheh Khurt is a large village with a good deal of cultivation about
it, a mosque or more, a _hammam_, a _chapar khana_, and a
caravanserai. Here again I found that the smart foreign soldier
attracted all the notice, and that before the people ceased to wonder
at him I had passed them. The _chapar khana_ was full of men, so I
have had to sink to the level of a recessed den with a manger in front
in a ruinous caravanserai crowded with Persian travellers, muleteers,
mules, horses, and asses, and the courtyard half-choked with ruins. I
had not seen the inside of one of these dens before. Travellers have
exhausted the vocabulary of abuse upon them; possibly they deserve it
in the "vermin season"; but there is nothing worse than a square and
perfectly dark room, with unplastered walls blackened by the smoke and
cobwebs of ages, and a door which will not fasten.
The air is cool and the sky blue, and sitting at the open door is very
pleasant. Mahboud and two of the servants caught cold at Kuhr[=u]d and
are ill, and my Arab has a chill too. He is a very stupid horse. His
gentle eyes never change their expression, and his small ears rarely
move. He has little sense or affection, but when he is patted his
proud neck takes on a loftier arch. Gentle as he is to people he is a
brute to other horses. He would like to fight every one of them, to
stand on his hind-legs and grapple them round the shoulders with his
fore-feet and bite their necks, roaring and squealing all the time. He
and Mahboud's horse are inveterate enemies, and one of the few
difficulties of the journey is the keeping them from a regular
stand-up fight.
This village is an oasis in the desert. I have been through its gates,
barely wide enough to admit an ass loaded with brushwood, with the
_seraidar_ and Mirza, walked through its narrow alleys, and
inadvertently stumbled into a mosque where a great crowd of women were
listening to a story of one of the twelve Imams told by a _mollah_,
looked down upon it and over the adjacent country from a house roof,
visited several houses, in which some of the inmates were ill and
desired "Feringhi medicine," had a long conversation with the
_ketchuda_, who came to see me to ask for eye lotion, and with the
_seraidar_, and altogether have had quite a pleasant day.