and Hadji was somewhat doubtful of my leadership. On arriving at the
beautiful crystal spring which the guide had indicated as the
halting-place for Sunday, I found that it issued from under a mound of
grass-grown graves, was in the full sun blaze, and at the lowest part
of the plain. The guide asserted that it was the only spring, but
having seen a dark stain of vegetation high among the hills, I halted
the caravan and rode off alone in search of the water I hoped it
indicated, disregarding the suppressed but unmistakably sneering
laughter of the guide and _charvadars_. In less than a mile I came
upon the dry bed of a rivulet, a little higher up on a scanty,
intermittent trickle, higher still on a gurgling streamlet fringed by
masses of blue scilla, and still higher on a small circular spring of
very cold water, with two flowery plateaux below it just large enough
for the camps, in a green quiet corrie, with the mountains close
behind. Hadji laughed, and the guide insisted that the spring was not
always there. A delightful place it is in which to spend Sunday
quietly, with its musical ripple of water, its sky-blue carpet of
scilla, its beds of white and purple irises, its slopes ablaze with
the _Fritillaria imperialis_, and its sweet, calm view of the green
Gurab plain and the silver windings of the Dinarud.
Above the spring is the precipitous hill of Tur, with the remains of
a rude fort on its shattered rocky summit. Two similar ruins are
visible from Tur, one on a rocky ledge of an offshoot of the
Kuh-i-Gerra, on the other side of the Dinarud valley, the other on the
crest of a noble headland of the Sanganaki range, which is visible
throughout the whole region. The local legend concerning them is that
long before the days of the Parthian kings, and when bows and arrows
were the only weapons known, iron being undiscovered, there was in the
neighbourhood of Gurab a king called Faruk Padishah, who had three
sons, Salmon, Tur, and Iraj. It does not appear to be usual among the
Bakhtiaris for sons to "get on" together after their father's death,
and the three youths quarrelled and built these three impregnable
forts--Killa Tur, the one I examined, Killa Iraj, and Killa Salmon.
The beautiful valley was evidently too narrow for their ambition, and
leaving their uncomfortable fastnesses they went northwards, and
founded three empires, Salmon to the Golden Horn, where he founded
Stamboul, Tur to Turkistan, and Iraj became the founder of the Iranian
Empire.
Killa Tur is a stone building mostly below the surface of the
hill-top, of rough hewn stone cemented with lime mortar of the
hardness of concrete. The inner space of the fort is not more than
eighty square yards. The walls are from three to six feet thick.
_Chigakhor, May 31._--The last twelve days have been spent in marching
through a country which has not been traversed by Europeans, only
crossed along the main track. On leaving the pleasant camp of Tur we
descended to the Gurab plain, purple in patches with a showy species
of garlic, skirted the base of the Tur spur, and rode for some miles
along the left bank of the Dinarud, which, after watering the plain of
Gurab, sparkles and rushes down a grassy valley bright with roses and
lilies, and well wooded with oak, elm, and hawthorn. This river,
gaining continually in volume, makes a turbulent descent to the Karun
a few miles from the point where we left it. This was the finest day's
march of the journey. The mountain forms were grander and more
definite, the vegetation richer, the scenery more varied, and a
kindlier atmosphere pervaded it. In the midst of a wood of fine walnut
trees, ash, and hawthorn, laced together by the tendrils of vines, a
copious stream tumbles over rocks fringed with maiden-hair, and
sparkles through grass purple with orchises. This is the only time
that I have seen the one or the other in Persia, and it was like an
unexpected meeting with dear friends.
Crossing the Dinarud on a twig bridge, fording a turbulent affluent,
which bursts full fledged from the mountain side, and ascending for
some hours through grassy glades wooded with oak and elm, we camped
for two days on the alpine meadow of Arjul, scantily watered but now
very green. Oak woods come down upon it, the vines are magnificent,
and there is some cultivation of wheat, which is sown by the nomads
before their departure in the late autumn, and is reaped during their
summer sojourn. There are no tents there at present, yet from camps
near and far, on horseback and on foot, people came for eye-lotions,
and remained at night to have them dropped into their eyes.
The next morning I was awakened at dawn by Mirza's voice calling to
me, "Madam, Hadji wants you to come down and sew up a mule that's been
gored by a wild boar." Awfully gored it was. A piece of skin about ten
inches square was hanging down between its forelegs, and a broad wound
the depth of my hand and fully a foot long extended right into its
chest, with a great piece taken out. I did what I could, but the
animal had to be left behind to be cured by the Mollah-i-Martaza, who
left us there. Another misfortune to Hadji was the loss of the fiery
leader of the caravan, Cock o' the Walk, but late at night he was
brought into camp at Dupulan quite crestfallen, having gone back to
the rich pastures which surround the Chesmeh-i-Gurab. The muleteer who
went in search of him was attacked by some Lurs and stripped of his
clothing, but on some men coming up who said his master was under the
protection of the Ilkhani, his clothes and horse were returned to him.
The parallel ranges with deep valleys between them, which are such a
feature of this country, are seen in perfection near Arjul. Some of
the torrents of this mountain region are already dry, but their broad
stony beds, full of monstrous boulders, arrest the fury with which at
times they seek the Karun. One of these, the Imamzada, passes through
the most precipitous and narrow gorge which it is possible to travel,
even with unloaded mules. The narrow path is chiefly rude rock
ladders, threading a gorge or chasm on a gigantic scale, with a
compressed body of water thundering below, concealed mainly by gnarled
and contorted trees, which find root-hold in every rift. Where the
chasm widens for a space before narrowing to a throat we forded it,
and through glades and wooded uplands reached Arjul, descending and
crossing the torrent by the same ford on the march to Dupulan the next
day.
Owing to the loss of two baggage animals and the necessary
re-adjustment of the loads, I was late in starting from Arjul, and the
heat as we descended to the lower levels was very great, the
atmosphere being misty as well as sultry. Passing upwards, through
glades wooded with oaks, the path emerges on high gravelly uplands
above the tremendous gorge of the Karun, the manifold windings of
which it follows at a great height. From the first sight of this river
in the Ardal valley to its emergence at Dupulan, just below these
heights, it has come down with abrupt elbow-like turns and singular
sinuosities--a full, rapid, powerful glass-green volume of water,
through a ravine or gorge or chasm from 1000 to 2000 feet in depth,
now narrowing, now widening, but always _the_ feature of the
landscape. It would be natural to use the usual phrase, and write of
the Karun having "carved" this passage for itself, but I am more and
more convinced that this is not the case, but that its waters found
their way into channels already riven by some of those mighty
operations of nature which have made of this country a region of walls
and clefts.
[Illustration: THE KARUN AT DUPULAN.]
A long, very steep gravelly descent leads from these high lands down
to the Karun, and to one of the routes--little used, however--from
Isfahan to Shuster. It is reported as being closed by snow four months
of the year. The scenery changed its aspect here, and for walls and
parapets of splintered rock there are rounded gravelly hills and
stretching uplands.
The three groups of most wretched mud hovels which form the village of
Dupulan ("Two Bridge Place") are on an eminence on the left bank of
the Karun, which emerges from its long imprisonment in a gorge in the
mountains by a narrow passage between two lofty walls of rock so
smooth and regular in their slope and so perfect a gateway as to
suggest art rather than nature. This river, the volume of which is
rapidly augmenting on its downward course, is here compressed into a
width of about twenty yards.
At this point a stone bridge, built by Hussein Kuli Khan, of one large
pointed arch with a smaller one for the flood, and a rough roadway
corresponding to the arch in the steepness of its pitch, spans the
stream, which passes onwards gently and smoothly, its waters a deep
cool green. Below Dupulan the Karun, which in that direction has been
explored by several travellers, turns to the south-west, and after a
considerable bend enters the levels above Shuster by a north-westerly
course. Near the bridge the Karun is joined by the Sabzu, a very
vigorous torrent from the Ardal plain, which is crossed by a twig
bridge, safer than it looks.
The camps were pitched in apricot orchards in the Sabzu ravine, near
some _elaegnus_ trees, which are now bearing their sweet gray and
yellow blossoms, which will be succeeded by auburn tresses of a woolly
but very pleasant fruit. Dupulan has an altitude of only 4950 feet,
and in its course from the Kuh-i-Rang to this point the Karun has
descended about 4000 feet. Though there was a breeze, and both ends of
my tent and the _kanats_ were open, the mercury was at 86 deg. inside, and
at 5 A.M. at 72 deg. outside (on May 21). There were no supplies, and even
milk was unattainable.
The road we followed ascends the Dupulan Pass, which it crosses at a
height of 6380 feet. The path is very bad, hardly to be called a path.
The valley which it ascends is packed with large and small boulders,
with round water-worn stones among them, and such track as there is
makes sharp zigzags over and among these rocks. _Screw_ was very
unwilling to face the difficulties, which took two hours to surmount.
The ascent was hampered by coming upon a tribe of Ilyats on the move,
who at times blocked up the pass with their innumerable sheep and
goats and their herds of cattle. Once entangled in this migration, it
was only possible to move on a few feet at a time. It straggled along
for more than a mile,--loaded cows and bullocks, innumerable sheep,
goats, lambs, and kids; big dogs; asses loaded with black tents and
short tent-poles on the loads; weakly sheep tied on donkeys' backs,
and weakly lambs carried in shepherds' bosoms; handsome mares, each
with her foal, running loose or ridden by women with babies seated on
the tops of loaded saddle-bags made of gay rugs; tribesmen on foot
with long guns slung behind their shoulders, and big two-edged knives
in their girdles; sheep bleating, dogs barking, mares neighing, men
shouting and occasionally firing off their guns, the whole ravine
choked up with the ascending tribal movement.
Half-way up the ascent there is a most striking view of mountain
ranges cleft by the great chasm of the Karun. The descent is into the
eastern part of the Ardal valley, over arid treeless hillsides
partially ploughed, to the village of Dehnau, not yet deserted for the
summer. Fattiallah Khan expected us, and rooms were prepared for me in
the women's house, which I excused myself from occupying by saying
that I cannot sleep under a roof. I managed also to escape partaking
of a huge garlicky dinner which was being cooked for me.
The Khan's house or fort, built like all else of mud, has a somewhat
imposing gateway, over which are the men's apartments. The roof is
decorated with a number of ibex horns. Within is a rude courtyard with
an uneven surface, on which servants and negro slaves were skinning
sheep, winnowing wheat, clarifying butter, carding wool, cooking, and
making cheese. The women's apartments are round the courtyard, and
include the usual feature of these houses, an _atrium_, or room
without a front, and a darkish room within. The floor of the _atrium_
was covered with brown felts, and there was a mattress for me to sit
upon. The ruling spirit of the _haram_ is the Khan's mother, a comely
matron of enormous size, who occasionally slapped her son's four young
and comely wives when they were too "forward." She wore a short
jacket, balloon-like trousers of violet silk, and a black coronet, to
which was attached a black _chadar_ which completely enveloped her.
The wives wore figured white _chadars_, print trousers, and strings
of coins. Children much afflicted with cutaneous maladies crawled on
the floor. Heaps of servants, negro slaves, old hags, and young girls
crowded behind and around, all talking at once and at the top of their
voices, and at the open front the village people constantly assembled,
to be driven away at intervals by a man with a stick. A bowl of cow's
milk and some barley bread were given to me, and though a remarkably
dirty negress kept the flies away by flapping the milk bowl with a
dirty sleeve, I was very grateful for the meal, for I was really
suffering from the heat and fatigue.
A visit to a _haram_ is not productive of mutual elevation. The women
seem exceedingly frivolous, and are almost exclusively interested in
the adornment of their persons, the dress and ailments of their
children, and in the frightful jealousies and intrigues inseparable
from the system of polygamy, and which are fostered by the servants
and discarded wives. The servile deference paid by the other women to
the reigning favourite before her face, and the merciless persistency
of the attempts made behind her back to oust her from her position,
and the requests made on the one hand for charms or potions to win or
bring back the love of a husband, and on the other for something which
shall make the favourite hateful to him, are evidences of the misery
of heart which underlies the outward frivolity.
The tone of Fattiallah Khan's _haram_ was not higher than usual. The
ladies took off my hat, untwisted my hair, felt my hands, and shrieked
when they found that my gloves came off; laughed immoderately at my
Bakhtiari shoes, which, it seems, are only worn by men; put their
rings on my fingers, put my hat on their own heads, asked if I could
give them better hair dyes than their own, and cosmetics to make their
skins fair; paid the usual compliments, told me to regard everything
as _pishkash_, asked for medicines and charms, and regretted that I
would not sleep in their house, because, as they said, they "never
went anywhere or saw anything."
They have no occupation, except occasionally a little embroidery. They
amuse themselves, they said, by watching the servants at work, and by
having girls to dance before them. They find the winter, though spent
in a warm climate, very long and wearisome, and after dark employ
female professional story-tellers to entertain them with love stories.
At night the elder lady sent three times for a charm which should give
her daughter the love of her husband. She is married to another Khan,
and I recalled her as the forlorn-looking girl without any jewels who
excited my sympathies in his house.
Marriages are early among these people. They are arranged by the
parents of both bride and bridegroom. The betrothal feast is a great
formality. The "settlements" having been made by the bridegroom's
father and mother, they distribute sweetmeats among the members of the
bride's family, and some respectable men who are present tie a
handkerchief round the head of the bride, and kiss the hands of her
parents as a sign of the betrothal. The engagement must be fulfilled
by the bride's parents under pain of severe penalties, from which the
bridegroom's parents are usually exempt. But, should he prove
faithless, he is a marked man. It appears that "breach of promise of
marriage" is very rare. The betrothal may take place at the tenderest
age, but the marriage is usually delayed till the bride is twelve
years old, or even older, and the bridegroom is from fifteen to
eighteen.
The "settlements" made at the betrothal are paid at the time of
marriage, and consist of a sum of money or cattle, mares, or sheep,
according to the circumstances of the bridegroom's parents. It is
essential among all classes that a number of costumes be presented to
the bride. After the marriage is over her parents bestow a suit of
clothes on her husband, but these are usually of an inferior, or, as
my interpreter calls them, of a "trivial" description.
A Bakhtiari marriage is a very noisy performance. For three days or
more, in fact as long as the festivities can be afforded, the
relations and friends of both parties are assembled at the tents of
the bride's parents, feasting and dancing (men and women on this
occasion dancing together), performing feats of horsemanship, and
shooting at a mark. The noise at this time is ceaseless. Drums,
tom-toms, reeds, whistles, and a sort of bagpipe are all in
requisition, and songs of love and war are chanted. At this time also
is danced the national dance, the _chapi_, of which on no other
occasion (except a burial) can a stranger procure a sight for love or
money. It is said to resemble the _arnaoutika_ of the modern Greeks;
any number of men can join in it. The dancers form in a close row,
holding each other by their _kamarbands_, and swinging along sidewise.
They mark the time by alternately stamping the heel of the right and
left foot. The dancers are led by a man who dances apart, waving a
handkerchief rhythmically above his head, and either singing a war
song or playing on a reed pipe. After the marriage feast the bride
follows her husband to his father's tent, where she becomes subject to
her mother-in-law.
The messenger, after looking round to see that there were no
bystanders, very mysteriously produced from his girdle a black,
flattish oval stone of very close texture, weighing about a pound,
almost polished by long handling. He told me that it was believed that
this stone, if kept in one family for fifty years and steadily worn
by father and son, would then not only turn to gold, but have the
power of transmuting any metal laid beside it for five years, and he
wanted to know what the wisdom of the Feringhis knew about it.
I went up to my camp above the village and tried to rest there, but
the buzz of a crowd outside and the ceaseless lifting of curtains and
_kanats_ made this quite impossible. When I opened the tent I found
the crowd seated in a semicircle five rows deep, waiting for
medicines, chiefly eye-lotion, quinine, and cough mixtures. These
daily assemblages of "patients" are most fatiguing. The satisfaction
is that some "lame dogs" are "helped over stiles," and that some
prejudice against Christians is removed.
After this Fattiallah Khan, with a number of retainers, paid a formal
visit to the Agha, who kindly sent for me, as I do not receive any but
lady visitors in my tent. The Khan is a very good-looking and
well-dressed man of twenty-eight, very amusing, and ready to be
amused. He was very anxious to be doctored, but looked the opposite of
a sick man. He and Isfandyar Khan were in arms against the Ilkhani two
years ago, and a few men were shot. He looked as if he were very sorry
not to have killed him.
The Bakhtiaris have an enormous conceit of themselves and their
country. It comes out in all ways and on all occasions, and their war
stories and songs abound in legends of singular prowess, one Bakhtiari
killing twenty Persians, and the like. They represent the power of the
Shah over them as merely nominal, a convenient fiction for the time
being, although it is apparent that Persia, which for years has been
aiming at the extinction of the authority of the principal chiefs, has
had at least a partial success.
At such interviews a private conversation is impossible. The manners
are those of a feudal _regime_. Heaps of retainers crowd round, and
even join in the conversation. A servant brought the Khan a handsome
_kalian_ to smoke three times. He also took tea. A great quantity of
opium for exportation is grown about Dehnau, and the Khan said that
the cultivation of it is always increasing.
From Dehnau the path I took leads over gravelly treeless hills,
through many treeless gulches, to the top of a great gorge, through
which the Sabzu passes as an impetuous torrent. The descent to a very
primitive bridge is long and difficult, a succession of rocky zigzags.
Picturesqueness is not a usual attribute of mud villages, but the view
from every point of Chiraz, the village on the lofty cliffs on the
other side of the stream, is strikingly so. They are irregularly
covered with houses, partly built on them and partly excavated out of
them, and behind is a cool mass of greenery, apricot orchards,
magnificent walnut and mulberry trees, great standard hawthorns loaded
with masses of blossom, wheat coming into ear, and clumps and banks of
canary-yellow roses measuring three inches across their petals. Groups
of women, in whose attire Turkey red predominated, were on the house
roofs. Wild flowers abounded, and the sides of the craggy path by
which I descended were crowded with leguminous and umbelliferous
plants, with the white and pink dianthus, and with the thorny
_tussocks_ of the gum tragacanth, largely used for kindling, now in
full bloom.
As I dragged my unwilling horse down the steep descent, his bridle was
taken out of my hands, and I was welcomed by the brother of Fattiallah
Khan, who, with a number of village men escorted me over the twig
bridge, and up to an exquisite halting-place under a large mulberry
tree, where the next two hours were spent in receiving visitors. It
is evident that these fine orchards must have been the pleasure-ground
of some powerful ruler, and the immense yellow roses are such as grow
in one or two places in Kashmir, where they are attributed to
Jehangir.
The track from Chiraz for many miles follows up the right bank of the
Sabzu at a great height, descends occasionally into deep gulches,
crosses the spurs of mountains whose rifts give root-hold to contorted
"pencil cedars," and winds among small ash trees and hawthorns, or
among rich grass and young wheat, which is grown to a considerable
extent on the irrigated slopes above the river. It is a great surprise
to find so much land under cultivation, and so much labour spent on
irrigation channels. Some of these canals are several miles in length,
and the water always runs in them swiftly, and the right way, although
the "savages" who make them have no levels or any tools but spades.
Mountains, much scored and canyoned by streams, very grand in form, and
with much snow still upon them, rise to a great height above the
ranges which form the Sabzu valley. From Chaharta, an uninteresting
camping-ground by the river, I proceeded by an elevated and rather
illegible track in a easterly direction to the meeting of two streams,
forded the Sabzu, and camped for two days on the green slope of Sabz
Kuh, at a height of 8100 feet, close to a vigorous spring whose waters
form many streamlets, fringed by an abundance of pink primulas, purple
and white orchises, white tulips, and small fragrant blue irises.
Lahdaraz is in the very heart of mountain ranges, and as the Ilyats
have not yet come up so high, there were no crowds round my tent for
medicine, but one sick woman was carried thither eleven miles on the
back of her husband, who seemed tenderly solicitous about her.
On Monday I spent most of the day 1000 feet higher, in most
magnificent scenery on an imposing scale of grandeur. The guide took
us from the camp through herbage, snow, and alpine flowers, up a
valley with fine mountains on either side, terminating on the brink of
a gigantic precipice, a cloven ledge between the Kuh-i-Kaller and a
stupendous cliff or headland, Sultan Ibrahim, over 12,000 feet, which
descends in shelving masses to an abyss of tremendous depth, where
water thunders in a narrow rift. The Sabz Kuh, or "green mountain"
range, famous for the pasturage of its higher slopes, terminates in
Sultan Ibrahim, and unites at its eastern end with the Kuh-i-Kaller, a
range somewhat higher. On the east side of this huge chasm rises
another range of peaks, with green shelves, dark rifts, and red
precipices, behind which rise another, and yet another, whose blue,
snow-patched summits blended with the pure cool blue of the sky. In
the far distance, in a blue veil, lies the green-tinted plain of Khana
Mirza, set as an emerald in this savage scenery, with two ranges
beyond, and above them the great mountain mass of the Riji, whose
snowy peaks were painted faintly on a faint blue heaven.