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Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan, Volume 2 (of 2)

by Isabella L. Bird · English · Gutenberg #38828 · 767,738 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan, Volume 2 (of 2)

Author: Isabella L. Bird


        
Release date: February 11, 2012 [eBook #38828]
                Most recently updated: January 8, 2021

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOURNEYS IN PERSIA AND KURDISTAN, VOLUME 2 (OF 2) ***




Produced by Julia Miller, Melissa McDaniel and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)







Transcriber's Note:

  Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
  been preserved.  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

  Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.

  Macrons (straight lines above the characters) are represented as
  [=a], [=e], [=i], and [=u].





  [Illustration: CHURCH OF MAR SHALITA, KOCHANES. _Frontispiece,
   vol. II._]





     JOURNEYS
     IN
     PERSIA AND KURDISTAN

     INCLUDING A SUMMER IN THE UPPER KARUN
     REGION AND A VISIT TO THE
     NESTORIAN RAYAHS

     BY MRS. BISHOP
     (ISABELLA L. BIRD)

     HONORARY FELLOW OF THE ROYAL SCOTTISH GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY
     AUTHOR OF 'SIX MONTHS IN THE SANDWICH ISLANDS'
     'UNBEATEN TRACKS IN JAPAN,' ETC.

     IN TWO VOLUMES--VOL. II.

     WITH PORTRAIT, MAPS, AND ILLUSTRATIONS

     LONDON
     JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET
     1891




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

IN VOLUME II.


     Church of Mar Shalita, Kochanes          _Frontispiece_

     Stone Lion and Guide                           _Page_ 8

     Karun at Pul-i-Ali-Kuh                _To face page_ 10

     Killa Bazuft                                  "      19

     Fording the Karun                             "      23

     Sar-i-Cheshmeh-i-Kurang                       "      29

     Zard Kuh Range                                "      30

     Aziz Khan                                            37

     Yahya Khan                                          110

     A Twig Bridge                                       114

     Tomb of Esther and Mordecai                         153

     Kurd of Sujbul[=a]k                                 208

     Hesso Khan                                          264

     A Syrian Family                                     273

     Designs on Tombs at Kochanes         _To face page_ 297

     Syrian Cross                                        297

     Syrian Priest and Wife                              310

     A Syrian Girl                                       315

     Rock and Citadel of Van              _To face page_ 338

     Kurds of Van                                        339

     A Hakkiari Kurd                                     372




LETTER XVI


     ALI-KUH, _June 12_.

Two days before we left Chigakhor fierce heat set in, with a blue heat
haze. Since then the mercury has reached 98 deg. in the shade. The call to
"Boot and Saddle" is at 3.45. Black flies, sand-flies, mosquitos,
scorpions, and venomous spiders abound. There is no hope of change or
clouds or showers until the autumn. Greenery is fast scorching up.
"The heaven above is as brass, and the earth beneath is as iron." The
sky is a merciless steely blue. The earth radiates heat far on into
the night. "Man goeth forth to his work," not "till the evening," but
in the evening. The Ilyats, with their great brown flocks, march all
night. The pools are dry, and the lesser streams have disappeared. The
wheat on the rain-lands is scorched before the ears are full, and when
the stalks are only six inches long. This is a normal Persian summer
in Lat. 32 deg. N. The only way of fighting this heat is never to yield to
it, to plod on persistently, and never have an idle moment, but I do
often long for an Edinburgh east wind, for drifting clouds and rain,
and even for a chilly London fog! This same country is said to be
buried under seven or eight feet of snow in winter.

On leaving Chigakhor we crossed a low hill into the Seligun valley, so
fair and solitary a month ago, now brown and dusty, and swarming with
Ilyats and their flocks, and Lake Albolaki has shrunk into something
little better than a swamp. A path at a great elevation above a stream
and a short rocky ascent brought us to the top of the pass above
Naghun, a wall of rock, with an altitude of 7320 feet, and a very
stiff zigzag descent upon Isfandyar Khan's garden, where the heat made
a long halt necessary. The view from the Naghun Pass of the great
Ardal valley is a striking one, though not so striking as one would
suppose from the altitude of the mountains, which, however, do not
nearly reach the limit of perpetual snow, though the Kuh-i-Kaller, the
Kuh-i-Sabz, the great mass of the Kuh-i-Gerra, the range of the
Kuh-i-Dinar, and the Kuh-i-Zirreh are all from 11,000 to 13,000 feet
in height. Even on the north side the range which we crossed by the
Gardan-i-Zirreh exceeds 9000 feet. The Karun, especially where it
escapes from the Ardal valley by the great Tang-i-Ardal, is a grand
feature of the landscape from the Naghun Pass.

On leaving Naghun we were joined by Aziz Khan, a petty chief, a
retainer of Isfandyar Khan, who has been deputed to attend on the
Agha, and who may be useful in various ways.

Between Naghun and Ardal, in an elevated ravine, a species of
_aristolochia_, which might well be mistaken for a pitcher-plant, was
growing abundantly, and on the Ardal plain the "sweet sultan" and the
_Ferula glauca_ have taken the place of the _Centaurea alata_, which
is all cut and stacked.

A hot and tedious march over the Ardal plateau, no longer green, and
eaten up by the passage of Ilyat flocks, brought us to the village of
Ardal, now deserted and melancholy, the great ibex horns which
decorate the roof of the Ilkhani's barrack giving it a spectral look
in its loneliness. The night was hot, and the perpetual passing of
Ilyats, with much braying and bleating, and a stampede of mules
breaking my tent ropes, forbade sleep. It was hot when we started the
next morning, still following up the Ardal valley and the Karun to
Kaj, a village on bare hummocks of gravel alongside of the Karun, a
most unpromising-looking place, but higher up in a lateral valley
there was a spring and a walled orchard, full of luxuriant greenery,
where we camped under difficulties, for the only entrance was by a
little stream, leading to a low hole with a door of stone, such as the
Afghans use for security, and through which the baggage could not be
carried. The tents had to be thrown over the wall. There was little
peace, for numbers of the Kaj men sat in rows steadily staring, and
there were crowds of people for medicine, ushered in by the
_ketchuda_.

Four miles above Ardal is a most picturesque scene, which, though I
had ridden to it before, I appreciated far more on a second visit.
This is the magnificent gorge of the Tang-i-Darkash Warkash, a
gigantic gash or rift in the great range which bounds the Ardal and
Kaj valleys on the north, and through which the river, on whose
lawn-like margin the camps were pitched at Shamsabad, find its way to
the Karun. A stone bridge of a single arch of wide span is thrown
across the stream at its exit from the mountains. Above the bridge are
great masses of naked rock, rising into tremendous precipices above
the compressed water, with roses and vines hanging out of their
clefts.

Below, the river suddenly expands, and there is a small village, now
deserted, with orchards and wheatfields in the depression in which the
Darkash Warkash finds its way across the Kaj valley, a region so
sheltered from the fierce sweep of the east wind, and so desirable in
other respects, that it bears the name of Bihishtabad, the _Mansion of
Heaven_.

Geographically this _tang_ has a great interest, for the water passing
under the bridge is the united volume of the water system to which
three out of the four districts known as the Chahar Mahals owe their
fertility, and represents the drainage of 2500 square miles. It will
be remembered that we entered the Chahar Mahals by the Kahva Rukh
Pass, and crossed that portion of them lying between Kahva Rukh and
the Zirreh Pass, which is politically, not geographically, a portion
of the Bakhtiari country, and is partially Christian.

I started at five the next morning to follow the left bank of the
Karun for nearly a whole march, sometimes riding close beside it among
barley-fields, then rising to a considerable height above it. It is
occasionally much compressed between walls of conglomerate, and boils
along furiously, but even where it is stillest and broadest, it is
always deep, full, and unfordable, bridged over, however, at a place
where there are several mills. An ascent from it leads to the village
of Rustam-i, where the people were very courteous and put me on the
road to Ali-kuh, a village not far from the river, at the foot of a
high range very much gashed by its affluents, one of which is very
salt.

Ali-kuh is quite deserted, and every hovel door is open. There is
nothing to tempt cupidity. The people, when they migrate to the high
pastures, take all their goods with them. There was not a creature
left behind who could tell me of a spring, and it was a tiresome
search before I came, high upon the hillside, on a stream tumbling
down under willows over red rock, in a maze of campanulas and roses.
The first essential of a camping-ground is that there should be space
to camp, and this is lacking; my servants sleep in the open, and my
bed and chair are propped up by stones on the steep slope. Scorpions,
"processional" caterpillars, earwigs, and flies abound. It is very
pretty, but very uncomfortable. The stream is noisy, and a rude flour
mill above has the power, which it has exercised, of turning it into
another channel for irrigation purposes. There are some large Ilyat
camps above, and from these and from Rustam-i the people have been
crowding in.

The wild flowers about Ali-kuh are in great profusion just now, the
most showy being hollyhocks--white, pink, and mauve, which affect the
cultivated lands. Three parasitic plants are also abundant, one of
them being the familiar dodder. Showy varieties of blue and white
campanulas, a pink mallow, a large blue geranium, chicory, the blue
cornflower, and the scarlet poppy all grow among the crops.

In the course of a day's expedition to the summit of the Ali-kuh Pass
large Ilyat camps abounded, and the men were engaged in stacking the
leaves and the blossoming stalks of the wild celery for fodder later
in the season. These flower-stalks attain a height of over six feet.
These, and the dried leaves of the _Centaurea alata_, which are laid
in heaps weighted down with stones, are relied upon by the nomads for
the food of their flocks on the way down from the summer to the winter
pastures, and much of their industry, such as it is, is spent in
securing these "crops."

This Ali-kuh Pass, 9500 feet in altitude, is on the most direct route
from Isfahan to the Bazuft river, but is scarcely used except by the
Ilyats. It is in fact horribly steep on the Ali-kuh side. The great
Bakhtiari ranges on its south-west side, and a deep valley below,
closed by the great mass of Amin-i-lewa, are a contrast to the utterly
shadeless and mostly waterless regions of Persia proper which lie
eastwards, blazing and glaring in the summer sunshine. There is a
little snow and some ice, and the snow patches are bordered by a small
rosy primula, delicate white tulips, and the violet _penguicula_ so
common on our moorlands. Mares with mule foals were grazing at a
height of over 9000 feet.

The Khan of Rustam-i, married to a daughter of the Ilkhani, "called."
He is very intelligent, has some idea of conversation, and was very
pleasant and communicative. He says the "Bakhtiaris love fighting, and
if there's a fight can't help taking sides, and if they have not guns
fight with stones," and that "one Bakhtiari can beat ten Persians"! I
asked him if he thought there would be fighting at Chigakhor, and he
said it was very likely, and he and his retainers would take the
Ilkani's side. He showed me with great pleasure a bullet wound in his
ankle, and another in his head, where a piece of the skull had been
removed. He wishes that "the English" would send them a doctor. "We
would gladly receive even a _Kafir_," he said. Mirza politely
translated this word Christian. He says they "suffer so much in dying
from want of knowledge." I explained to him the virtues of some of
their own medicinal herbs, and he at once sent his servant to gather
them, and having identified them he wrote down their uses and the
modes of preparing them.

With the Khan was his prim little son, already, at ten years old, a
bold rider and a good shot, the pale auburn-haired boy whom his
grandmother, the Ilkhani's principal wife, offered me as a present if
I would cure him of deafness, debility, and want of appetite! I gave
him a large bottle of a clandestinely-made decoction of a very bitter
wormwood, into which I put with much ceremony, after the most approved
fashion of a charlatan, some tabloids of _nux vomica_ and of
permanganate of potash. When I saw him at the fort of Chigakhor he was
not any better, but since, probably from leading a healthier life than
in Ardal, he has greatly improved, and being strong is far less deaf,
and consequently the virtues of wormwood have forced themselves on the
Khan's attention.

The boy had suffered various things. He had been sewn up in raw
sheepskins, his ears had been filled with fresh clotted blood, and he
had been compelled to drink blood while warm, taken from behind the
ear of a mare, and also water which had washed off a verse of the
Koran from the inside of a bowl. It transpired that the Khan, who is a
devout Moslem and a _mollah_, could not allow his son to take my
medicine unless a piece of paper with a verse of the Koran upon it
were soaked in the decoction.

I asked him why the Bakhtiaris like the English, and he replied,
"Because they are brave and like fighting, and like going shooting on
the hills with us, and don't cover their faces." He added after a
pause, "and because they conquer all nations, and do them good after
they have conquered them." I asked how they did them good, and he
said, "They give them one law for rich and poor, and they make just
laws about land, and their governors take the taxes, and no more, and
if a man gets money he can keep it. Ah," he exclaimed earnestly, "why
don't the English come and take this country? If you don't, Russia
will, and we would rather have the English. We're tired of our lives.
There's no rest or security."

It may well be believed that there are no schools, though some
deference is paid to a _mollah_, which among the Bahktiaris means only
a man who can write, and who can read the Koran. These rare
accomplishments are usually hereditary. The chiefs' sons are taught to
read and write by _munshis_. A few of the highest Khans send their
sous to Tihran or Isfahan for education, or they attend school while
their fathers are detained as hostages in the capital for the good
behaviour of their clans. There they learn a few words of French and
English, along with pure Persian and Arabic, and the few other
branches of the education of a Persian noble. They are fine manly
boys, and ride and shoot well from an early age. But the worst of them
is that they never are "boys." They are little men, with the stiffness
and elaboration of manner which the more important Khans have copied
from the Persians, and one can never fancy their abandoning themselves
to "miscellaneous impulses."

  [Illustration: STONE LION AND GUIDE.]

_Killa Bazuft, Bazuft Valley, June 18._--A few days ago we left the
last village of the region behind, to enter upon a country not laid
down in any maps. It is a wild land of precipitous mountain ranges,
rising into summits from 11,000 to 13,000 feet high, enclosing valleys
and gorges or canyons of immense depth, some of them only a few feet
wide, a goodly land in part, watered by springs and streams, and green
with herbage and young wheat, and in part naked, glaring, and
horrible. It is very solitary, although at times we come upon
Bakhtiaris in camp, or moving with their flocks, much darker in
complexion and more uncivilised in appearance than those of Ardal and
its neighbourhood. From these camps Aziz Khan procures guides, milk,
and bread. The heat increases daily, and the hour of getting up is now
2.45. There are many forlorn burial-grounds, and their uncouth stone
lions, more or less rudely carved, are the only permanent inhabitants
of the region. Wheat and barley grow in nearly all the valleys, and
clothe the hill-slopes, but where are the sowers and the reapers, and
where are the barns? Cultivation without visible cultivators is
singularly weird.

Although the Bakhtiaris expend great labour on irrigation, their
methods of cultivation are most simple. They plough with a small
plough with the share slightly shod with iron; make long straight
furrows, and then cross them diagonally. They do not manure the soil,
but prevent exhaustion by long fallows. After they come up to the
mountains they weed their crops carefully, and they look remarkably
clean. In reaping they leave a stubble five or six inches long. There
is a good deal of spade husbandry in places where they have no oxen,
or where the arable patches are steep. The spades are much longer than
ours, and the upper corners of the sides are turned over for three
inches.

A spade is worked by two men, one using his hands and one foot, and
the other a rope placed where the handle enters the iron, with which
he gives the implement a sharp jerk towards him.

In the higher valleys they grow wheat and barley only, but in the
lower rice, cotton, melons, and cucumbers are produced, and opium for
exportation. They plough and sow in the autumn, and reap on their
return to their "yailaks" the following summer. Their rude water
mills, and the hand mills worked by women, grind the wheat into the
coarse flour used by them.

It appears from the statements of the _Mollah-i-Murtaza_, Aziz Khan,
an intelligent son of Chiragh Ali Khan, and others, that the tenure of
arable lands is very simple and well understood. "From long ago"
certain of such lands have been occupied by certain tribes, and have
been divided among families. Some of the tribes possess documents,
supposed to secure these rights, granted by Ali Mardan Khan, the
Bakhtiari King of Persia, in the anarchical period which followed the
death of Nad[=i]r Shah. Those of them who are without documents
possess the lands by right of use. Nearly all the tribes have
individual rights of tillage, and have expended much labour on their
lands in irrigation and removing stones. A fee for the use of these
lands is paid to the Ilkhani every year in money or cattle.

For pasturage there is only the right of "use and wont," and the
grazing is free. For camping-grounds each tribe has its special "use
and wont," subject to change by the order of the Ilkhani, but it was
out of quarrels concerning these and the pasture lands that many of
the feuds at present existing arose.

We left Ali-kuh in a westerly direction, followed and crossed the
Karun, left it at its junction with the Duab, ascended this short
affluent to its source, crossed the Gardan-i-Cherri at an elevation of
9200 feet, and descended 4000 feet into the Bazuft or Rudbar valley,
where the camps now are. The road after leaving Ali-kuh, where the
slopes were covered with pink and white hollyhocks, keeps along a
height above the Karun, and then descends abruptly into a chasm formed
of shelves of conglomerate, on the lowest of which there is just room
for a loaded mule between the cliffs and the water at the narrowest
part. Shadowed by shelf upon shelf of rock, the river shoots
through a narrow passage, as though impatient for its liberation from
an unnatural restraint, and there is what I hesitate to call--a
bridge. At all events there is a something by which men and beasts can
cross the chasm--a rude narrow cradle of heavy branches, filled with
stones, quite solid and safe, resting on projections of rock on either
side. The Karun, where this Pul-i-Ali-kuh crosses it, is only nine
feet six inches in width. I found the zigzag ascent on the right bank
a very difficult one, and had sundry falls.

  [Illustration: KARUN AT PUL-I-ALI-KUH. _To face p. 10, vol. II._]

Two hours more brought us to the junction of the Karun and Duab ("two
rivers") above which the former is lost to view in a tremendous
ravine, the latter coming down a green valley among high and mostly
bare mountains, on a gravelly slope of one of which we camped, for the
purpose of ascending a spur of a lofty mountain which overhangs the
Karun. On such occasions I take my mule, Suleiman, the most surefooted
of his surefooted race, who brings me down precipitous declivities
which I could not look at on my own feet. After crossing the Duab, a
green, rapid willow-fringed river, by a ford so deep as to be half-way
up the bodies of the mules, and zigzagging up a steep mountain side to
a ridge of a spur of Kaisruh, so narrow that a giant might sit astride
upon it, a view opened of singular grandeur.

On the southern side of the ridge, between mountains of barren rock,
snow-slashed, and cleft by tremendous rifts, lying in shadows of cool
gray, the deep, bright, winding Duab flows down the green valley which
it blesses, among stretches of wheat and mounds where only the
forgotten dead have their habitation,--a silver thread in the mellow
light. On the northern side lies the huge Tang-i-Karun, formed by the
magnificent mountain Kaisruh on its right bank, and on the left by
mountains equally bold, huge rock-masses rising 3000 feet
perpendicularly, and topped by battlements of terra-cotta rock, which
took on vermilion colouring in the sunset glow. Through this mighty
gorge the Karun finds its way, a green, rapid willow-fringed stream
below the ridge, and visible higher up for miles here and there in
bottle-green pools, everywhere making sharp turns in its stupendous
bed, and disappearing from sight among huge piles of naked rock. Even
on this splintered ridge, at a height of 8000 feet, there were tulips,
celery in blossom, mullein, roses, legions of the _Fritillaria
imperialis_, anemones, blue linum, and a wealth of alpine plants.

There also are found in abundance the great umbelliferous
plants--_Ferula glauca_, _Ferula candelabra_, and the _Ferula
asafoetida_. The latter I have never seen elsewhere, and was very
much rejoiced to procure some of its "tears," though the odour will
cling to my gloves till they are worn out. Hadji had heard that it is
found in one or two places in the Bakhtiari country, but up to this
time I had searched for it in vain. There also for the first time I
found the _Astragalus verus_, the gum tragacanth of commerce. The
ordinary tragacanth bush, the "goat's thorn," the _Astragalus
tragacantha_, which is found everywhere on the arid hillsides,
produces a gummy juice but no true gum, and its chief value is for
kindling fires.

Following up the Duab, through brush of tamarisk, _Hippophae
rhamnoides_, and Indian myrtle, above the cultivated lands, and
passing burial mounds with their rude stone lions with their
sculptured sides, we camped in a valley at the foot of the
Gardan-i-Cherri and Kuh-i-Milli, close to the powerful spring in the
hillside which is the source of the stream, where there was abundant
level ground for three camps. The next evening Karim, the man who so
nearly lost his arm some time ago, was carried past my tent fainting,
having been severely kicked in the chest by the same horse that
lacerated his arm. "I _am_ unlucky," he murmured feebly, when he came
to himself in severe pain.

I have crossed the Gardan-i-Cherri twice, and shall cross it a third
time. It marks a great change in the scenery, and the first intimation
of possible peril from the tribesmen. The ascent from the east, which
is extremely rugged and steep, is one of 2000 feet in three and a half
miles. Near the top were many Ilyats camping without their tents, a
rough-looking set, with immense flocks, and on the summit the Agha,
who was without his attendants, met some men who were threatening both
in speech and gesture.

From the top there is a wonderful view into an unknown land. The
ranges are heavily wooded, and much broken up into spurs and rounded
peaks. Between the great range, crossed at a height of 9550 feet by
the Cherri Pass, and a wall-like range of mighty mountains of white
limestone with snow on them hardly whiter than themselves, lies the
Bazuft valley, 4000 feet below, and down upon it come sharp
forest-covered spurs, often connected by sharp ridges of
forest-covered rocks cleft by dark forest-filled ravines, with
glimpses now and then of a winding peacock-green river, flowing at
times through green lawns and slopes of grain, at others disappearing
into gigantic canyons--great forest-skirted and snow-slashed mountains
apparently blocking up the valley at its higher end. At the first
crossing all lay glorified in a golden veil, with indigo shadows in
the rifts and white lights on the heights.

The first part of the descent is fearfully rough, a succession of
ledges of broken rock encumbered here and there with recently dead
horses or mules, and the whole downward course of 4000 feet is without
a break, the climate getting hotter and hotter as one descends. At
8000 feet the oak forests begin. This oak bears acorns nearly three
inches long, which are ground and made into bread. All other
vegetation is dried and scorched, and the trees rise out of dust. In
this forest we came upon a number of Ilyats, some of whom were lying
under a tree, ill of fever, and Aziz Khan insisted that then and there
I should give them quinine.

At the bottom of this unalleviated descent there is a shady torrent,
working a rude flour mill; a good deal of wheat speckled with
hollyhocks, white campanulas, and large snapdragons; some very old
tufa cones, and below them level lawns, eaten bare, fringed with oaks,
with dry wood for the breaking; and below again the translucent,
rapid, peacock-green, beautiful Bazuft. But not even the sound of the
rush of its cool waters could make one forget the overpowering heat,
100 deg., even in the shade of a spreading tree.

I know not which is the more trying, the ascent or the descent of the
4000 feet of ledges and zigzags on the southern face of the
Gardan-i-Cherri. The road is completely encumbered with stones, and is
being allowed to fall into total disrepair, although it is the
shortest route between Isfahan and Shuster. Things are undoubtedly
deteriorating. The present Ilkhani is evidently not the man to get and
keep a grip on these turbulent tribesmen. I notice a gradual weakening
of his authority as the distance from Ardal increases.

When Hussein Kuli Khan, the murdered father of Isfandyar Khan, was
Ilkhani, he not only built substantial bridges such as those over the
Karun in the Tang-i-Ardal and at Dupulan, but by severe measures
compelled every tribe using this road in its spring and autumn
migrations to clear off the stones and repair it. As it is, nearly all
our animals lost one or more of their shoes on the descent. The ascent
and descent took eight hours.

Some of the cliffs on the right bank of the Bazuft are of gypsiferous
rock, topped with pure white gypsum, resting on high, steep elevations
of red and fawn coloured earths, with outcrops of gravel conglomerate.

Yesterday was spent in a very severe expedition of twenty-four miles
from Mowaz to the lofty plateau of Gorab, mostly through oak forest,
crossing great canyons 800 feet deep and more, with almost precipitous
sides, descending upon the awful gorge through which the Bazuft passes
before it turns round the base of the Kuh-i-Gerra, the monarch of this
mass of mountains. The ascents and descents were endless and severe as
we crossed the mountain spurs. It was a simple scramble up and down
rock ledges, among great boulders, or up or down smooth slippery
surfaces. Even my trusty mule slipped and fell several times. Often
the animals had to jump up or down ledges nearly as high as their
chests, and through rifts so narrow as only just to admit the riders.
In some places it was absolutely necessary to walk, and in attempting
to get down one bad place on my own feet I fell and hurt my knee
badly--a serious misfortune just at present.

After twelve miles of a toilsome march the guide led us up among the
boulders of a deep ravine to the treeless plateau of Gorab, an
altitude of 8000 feet, where the air was fresh and cool. The scenery
is on a gigantic scale, and the highly picturesque Bazuft is seen
passing through magnificent canyons of nearly perpendicular rock, and
making sharp turns round the bases of lofty spurs, till after a course
of singular beauty it joins the Karun at Shalil. It is glorious
scenery, full of magnificence and mystery. This beautiful Ab-i-Bazuft,
which for a long distance runs parallel with the Karun within fifteen
or eighteen miles of it, is utterly unlike it, for the Karun is the
most tortuous of streams and the Bazuft keeps a geographically
straight course for a hundred miles. Springs bursting from the
mountain sides keep it always full; it passes nearly ice-cold among
lawns and woods, and its colour is everywhere a pure peacock-green of
the most exquisite tint, contrasting with the deep blue-green of the
Karun. Shuster is only seven marches off, and in the direction in
which it lies scorched barren hills fill up the distance, sinking down
upon yellow barren plains, softened by a yellow haze, in which the
imagination sees those vast alluvial stretches which descend in an
unbroken level to the Shat-el-Arab and the Persian Gulf. Many a lofty
range is seen, but the eye can rest only on the huge Gerra mass, with
the magnificent snowy peak of Dalonak towering above all, bathed in a
heavenly blue.

The shelter-tent was pitched till the noonday heat moderated. Abbas
Ali and Mehemet Ali were inside it, and I was reading _Ben Hur_ aloud.
Aziz Khan was lying half in and half out, with a quizzical look on his
face, wondering at a woman knowing how to read. Not a creature had
been seen, when as if by magic nine or ten Lurs appeared, established
themselves just outside, and conversed with Aziz. I went on reading,
and they went on talking, the talk growing disagreeably loud, and Aziz
very much in earnest. Half an hour passed thus, the Agha, who
understood their speech, apparently giving all his attention to _Ben
Hur_.

I did not hear till the evening that the topic of the talk was our
robbery, with possible murder, and that Aziz was spending all his
energies on dissuading them, telling them that we are guests of the
Ilkhani and under the protection of the Shah, and that they and their
tribe would be destroyed if they carried out their intention. They
discovered that his revolvers were not loaded--he had in fact
forgotten his cartridges, and one said to the others, "Don't give him
time to load."

While the tent was being packed, I sat on a stone watching the Lurs,
dark, handsome savages, armed with loaded clubbed sticks, and the Agha
was asking them about the country, when suddenly there was a _melee_,
and the semblance of an attack on him with the clubs. He seemed to
shake his assailants off, lounged towards his mule, took his revolver
from the holster, fired it in the air, and with an unconcerned,
smiling face, advanced towards the savages, and saying something like
calling attention to the excellences of that sort of firearm, fired
two bullets close over their heads. They dread our arms greatly, and
fell back, and molested us no further. Till later I did not know that
the whole thing was not a joke on both sides. Aziz says that if it had
not been for the Agha's coolness, all our lives would have been
sacrificed.

In returning, the Agha, walking along a lower track than we were
riding upon, met some Lurs, who, thinking that he was alone, began to
be insolent, and he heard them say to each other, "Strip him, kill
him," when their intention was frustrated by our appearance just
above. After crossing the Serba torrent with its delicious shade of
fine plane trees, the heat of the atmosphere, with the radiation from
rock and gravel, was overpowering. I found the mercury at 103 deg. in my
shady tent.

Aziz Khan now pays me a visit each evening, to give me such
information as is attainable regarding the people and locality, and,
though he despised me at first, after Moslem fashion, we are now very
good friends. He is a brave man, and made no attempt to magnify the
danger at Gorab, merely saying that he was devoutly thankful that we
had escaped with our lives. He remonstrated with me for pitching my
tent in such a lonely place, quite out of sight of the other camps,
but it was then too dark to move it. He said that there was some risk,
for the Lurs had declared they would "rob us yet," but he should
watch all night. I knew he would, for the sake of his Arab mare!

This morning, soon after leaving Mowaz, the Sahib's guide galloped up,
saying that his master had been robbed of "everything" the night
before, and was without the means of boiling water. Orders were given
for the camps to close up, for no servants to ride in advance of or
behind the caravan, and that no Ilyats should hang about the tents.

Although the Bakhtiari Lurs are unified under one chief, who is
responsible to the Shah for the security of the country, and though
there has been a great improvement since Sir A. H. Layard's time, the
advance, I think, is chiefly external. The instincts and traditions of
the tribes remain predatory. Possibly they may no longer attack large
caravans, but undoubtedly they rob, when and where they can, and they
have a horrid habit of stripping their victims, leaving them with but
one under garment, if they do not kill them. They have a gesture,
often used by Aziz Khan in his descriptions of raids, which means
stripping a man to his shirt. The word used is skin, but they are not
such savages as this implies. The gesture consists in putting a finger
into the mouth, slowly withdrawing it, and holding it up with a look
of infinite complacency. Aziz admits with some pride that with twenty
men he fell upon a rich caravan near Shiraz, and robbed it of L600.

  [Illustration: KILLA BAZUFT. _To face p. 19, vol. II._]

To-day's march has been mainly through very attractive scenery. We
crossed the Ab-i-Mowaz, proceeded over slopes covered with wheat and
flowers, and along a rocky path overhanging the exquisitely tinted
Bazuft, forded the Ab-i-Nozi, at a place abounding in tamarisks
bearing delicate, feathery pink blossoms, and ascended to upland lawns
of great beauty, on which the oaks come down both in clumps and
singly, as if planted. The views from this natural park are
glorious. Besides the great ranges with which I have become familiar,
the Safid-Kuh, or "white mount," on the right bank of the river, at
present deserves its name, its snows descending nearly to the forests
which clothe its lower heights. A deep chasm conceals the Tabarak
stream up to the point of its foamy junction with the Bazuft, which
emerges on the valley by an abrupt turn through a very fine canyon.

We crossed the pure green waters by a broad ford, and camped on the
right bank on a gravel plateau above it, on which is Killa Bazuft, a
large quadrangular stone fort with round towers at the corners, an
arcaded front, a vaulted entrance, and rooms all round the quadrangle.
It is now ruinous. Some irrigated land near it produces rice and
mosquitos. The Sahib's camp is pitched here. He has been badly robbed,
both of clothing and cooking-pots, and was left without the means of
cooking any food.

_Dima, June 26._--We retraced our steps as far as the source of the
Duab, crossed into the Shamisiri valley, and by a low pass into the
Karun valley, forded the Karun by a strong deep ford, crossed a low
range into the Zarin valley, where are some of the sources of the
Zainderud, from thence marched to the Tang-i-Ghezi, through which the
Zainderud, there a vigorous river, passes into the Chahar Mahals, went
up the Kherson valley, crossed Gargunak, and by a very steep and
rugged descent reached this camp, a place of springs, forming the
upper waters of the Zainderud. These days have been severe, the heat
great, and the incidents few.

The ascent of the Gardan-i-Cherri was difficult. The guide misled us,
and took us through a narrow rift in the crest of a ridge on broken
ledges of rock. We camped at a height of 9000 feet in the vicinity of
snow. The new arrangement, which is necessary for safety, does not
increase comfort, for the Arab horses, noisy, quarrelsome fellows, are
in camp, and the mules shake their bells and sneeze and bray at
intervals all night.

The descent of 2000 feet into the Shamisiri valley, over bare gravel
chiefly, was a very hot one. It is a wide, open valley with stony
hills of no great height enclosing it, with much green sward along the
river banks, above which, running to a great height on the hillsides,
are stretches of irrigated wheat. So far as I have yet seen, the wheat
is all "bearded." It is a most smiling valley; so cultivated, indeed,
and so trim and free from weeds are the crops, that one naturally
looks for neat farm-houses and barns. But one looks in vain, for
except the ruins of some Armenian villages there are no traces of
inhabitants, till night comes, when the glimmer of camp fires here and
there high up on the hillsides shows the whereabouts of some migratory
families.

I start so early as to get in to the camping-ground about nine now,
and the caravan, two hours later, comes in with mules braying, bells
ringing, horses squealing for a fight, servants shouting. Then the
mules roll, the tent-pegs are hammered down, and in the blazing,
furnace-like afternoons the men, who have been up since 2 A.M., take a
prolonged siesta, and a solemn hush falls on the camp. After the Gorab
affair I loaded my revolver, and now sleep with it under my pillow,
carry it in my holster, and never have it out of my reach. I _think_ I
should only fire it in the air if I were attacked, but the fact of
being known to be armed with such a weapon is more likely than
anything else to prevent attack. No halt is now made on the march.

The sick people who appeared at Shamisiri, from no one knows where,
were difficult and suspicious, and so they have been since. The
dialect of Persian has somewhat changed, and Aziz Khan now interprets
the strange accounts of maladies to Mirza, and he interprets to me.
When they crowd almost into the tent, Aziz, when appealed to, pelts
them with stones and beats them with a stick, and they take it very
merrily. He thinks that I have appliances in the "leather box" for the
cure of all ills, and when he brings blind people, and I say that I
cannot do anything for them, he loses his temper. No matter where we
camp, dark, handsome men spring up as if by magic, and hang about the
fires for the rest of the day. From among these the guides are usually
selected.

Numbers of "patients" appear everywhere, and the well assemble with
the sick round my tent. At Berigun the people were very ignorant and
obstinate. After spending a whole hour on two men, and making
medicines up for them, they said they would have the "Feringhi's
ointment," but "nothing that goes down the throat." Another said (and
he had several disciples) that he would not take the medicine "for
fear it should make him a Christian." One man, who has fever, took
away four quinine powders yesterday for four days, and came back
to-day deaf and giddy, saying that I have killed him. He had taken
them all at once!

It is very pleasant to see how very fond the men are of their
children, and how tender and loving they are to their little girls.
The small children are almost always pretty, but by three years old
the grace and innocence of childhood are completely lost, and as in
Persia there are no child faces; indeed, the charm of childhood
scarcely survives the weaning-day. If they are sick the fathers carry
them for miles on their backs for medicine, and handle them very
gently, and take infinite pains to understand about the medicine and
diet. Even if both father and mother come with a child, the man always
carries it, holds it, is the spokesman, and takes the directions.
Several men have offered me mares and cows if I will cure their
children. All the "patients" ask finally, "What must I eat, and not
eat?"

The Bakhtiaris have often asked me whether it is unwholesome to live
so much as they do on cheese and sour milk. They attribute much of
their dyspepsia to their diet. They live principally on _mast_ or
curdled milk, buttermilk, cheese, _roghan_ or clarified butter,
_n[=a]n_, a thin leavened cake, made of wheat or acorn flour, bannocks
of barley meal, celery pickled in sour milk, _kabobs_ occasionally,
and broth flavoured with celery stalks and garlic frequently. They
never use fresh milk. They eat all fruits, whether wild or cultivated,
while they are quite unripe. Almonds are eaten green.

They hunt the ibex and shoot the francolin and the bustard, and make
soup of them. They are always on the hills after game, and spare
nothing that they see. I have seen them several times firing at
red-legged partridges sitting on their nests. They use eggs
considerably, boiling them hard. Alcohol in any form is unknown among
them, and few, except the Khans, have learned the delights of tea and
coffee. Buttermilk, pure water, and _sharbat_, when they can get
lime-juice, are their innocent beverages. The few who drink tea use it
chiefly to colour and flavour syrup. They eat twice in the day. Though
their out-of-doors life is healthy and their diet simple, they rarely
attain old age. A man of sixty is accounted very old indeed. The men
are certainly not polite to their wives, and if they get in their way
or mine they kick them aside, just as rough men kick dogs.

  [Illustration: FORDING THE KARUN. _To face p. 23, vol. II._]

We have been marching through comparatively lowland scenery, like the
Chahar Mahals, from which we are not far. At Shamisiri, except for the
fine peak of Dilleh, there are no heights to arrest the eye. The
hills on the north side are low, gravelly, and stony, with
perpendicular outbreaks of rock near their summits. To the south they
are of a different formation, with stratification much contorted. The
next march was over low stony hills, with scanty herbage and much gum
tragacanth, camel thorn, and the _Prosopis stephaniana_, down a steep
descent into the Karun valley, where low green foot-hills, cultivated
levels, and cultivation carried to a great altitude on the hillsides
refresh the tired eyes. The Karun, liberated for a space from its
imprisonment in the mountains, divides into several streams, each one
a forcible river, winds sinuously among the grass, gleams like a
mirror, and by its joyous, rapid career gives animation to what even
without it would be at this season a very smiling landscape. Crossing
the first ford in advance of the guide, we got into very deep water,
and _Screw_ was carried off his feet, but scrambled bravely to a
shingle bank, where we waited for a native, who took us by long and
devious courses to the left bank. The current is strong and deep, and
the crossing of the caravan was a very pretty sight.

We halted for Sunday at Berigun, an eminence on which are a ruinous
fort, a graveyard with several lions rampant, and a grove of very fine
white poplars, one of them eighteen feet in circumference six feet
from the ground. A sea of wheat in ear, the Karun in a deep channel in
the green plateau, some herbage-covered foot-hills, and opposite, in
the south-west, the great rocky, precipitous mass of the Zard Kuh
range, with its wild crests and great snow-fields, made up a pleasant
landscape. The heat at this altitude of 8280 feet, and in the shade,
was not excessive.

The next day's march was short and uninteresting, partly up the Karun
valley, and partly over gravelly hills with very scanty herbage and no
camps, from which we came down abruptly into the elevated plain of
Cheshmeh Zarin (the Golden Fountain) at a height of 8500 feet, the
plain being about five miles by two and a half. Receding hills with
some herbage upon them border the plateau, and the Zard Kuh, though at
some distance, apparently blocks up the western end. A powerful spring
bursts from under a ridge of rock half-way down the plain, and becomes
at once a clear gentle stream, fifty feet broad, which passes through
the level green sward in a series of turns which are quite marvellous.
Smooth sward, green barley, many yoke of big oxen ploughing up rich
black soil, dark flocks of thousands of sheep and goats, asses, mares,
mules, cows, all feeding, large villages of black tents, one of them
surrounding the white pavilion of a Khan, saddle-horses tethered,
flocks being led to and fro, others being watered, laden asses
arriving and departing, butter being churned, and carpets being woven,
form a scene of quiet but busy industry which makes one feel quite "in
the world." This stream is one of the chief sources of the Zainderud.

From this cheerful camping-ground we marched over low hills, forded
the Zainderud several times, and came upon several Ilyat camps on low,
rich pasture lands. These nomads had no tents, but dwelt in booths
without fronts, the roofs and backs being made of the tough yellow
flowering stalks of the celery. The path follows the left bank of the
river, there a full, broad stream, flowing through the Tang-i-Ghezi,
through rounded hills, and scenery much like that of the Cheviots. At
the Tang-i-Ghezi we camped, and this morning crossed a low hill into a
heavily-grassed valley watered by the Kherson, ascended a shoulder of
Gargunak, and halted at Aziz Khan's tents, where the women were very
hospitable, bringing out cows' milk, and allowing themselves to be
photographed.

An unpleasant _contretemps_ occurred to me while we were marching
through some very lonely hills. If Mirza rides as he should, behind
me, his mule always falls out of sight, and he is useless, so lately I
have put him in front. To-day I dropped a glove, and after calling and
whistling to him vainly, got off and picked it up, for I am reduced to
one pair, but attempt after attempt to get on again failed, for each
time, as I put my hand on the saddle, _Screw_ nimbly ran backwards,
and in spite of my bad knee I had to lead him for an hour before I was
missed, running a great risk of being robbed by passing Lurs. When
Mirza did come back he left his mule in a ravine, exposed to robbers,
and Aziz Khan was so infuriated that he threatened to "cut his
throat." Aziz despises him as a "desk-bred" man for his want of
"out-doorishness," and mimics the dreamy, helpless fashion in which he
sits on his mule, but Mirza can never be provoked into any display of
temper or discourtesy.

From Aziz's camp we had a very steep and rugged descent to this place,
Cheshmeh Dima, where we have halted for two days. Three streams, the
head-waters of the Zainderud, have their sources in this
neighbourhood, and one of them, the Dima, rises as a powerful spring
under a rock here, collects in a basin, and then flows away as a
full-fledged river. The basin or pool has on one side a rocky hill,
with the ruins of a fort upon it, and on the three others low stone
walls of very rude construction. The Lurs, who soon came about us, say
that the ruined fort was the pleasure palace of a great king who
coined money here. The sides of the valley are dotted with camps.
Opposite are the large camp and white tent of Chiragh Ali Khan, a
chief who has the reputation of being specially friendly in his views
of England.

The heat yesterday was overpowering, and the crowds of Bakhtiari
visitors and of sick people could hardly be received with benevolent
equanimity. This great heat at an altitude of 7600 feet is most
disappointing. These head-waters of the Zainderud, rising in and
beautifying the Zarin, Kharba, and Dima valleys, unite before reaching
the Tang-i-Ghezi, from which they pass to Isfahan, and are, as has
been stated before, eventually lost in a swamp. This is the most
watery region I have seen in Persia. Besides the gushing, powerful
springs which form vigorous streams at the moment of their exit from
the mountain sides, there are many moist, spongy places in the three
valleys, regularly boggy, giving out a pleasant _squish_ under a
horse's tread, and abounding in plants associated in my ideas with
Highland bogs, such as the _Drosera rotundifolia_, which seems to
thrive on a small red fly unknown to me. These waters and swampy
places occupy a small area, just within the Outer range, below the
southern slopes of the Kuh-i-Rang.

From this place I made an expedition of thirty miles up a very fine
valley, much of which is irrigated and cultivated, by an ascent of
2500 feet to the Gal-i-Bard-i-Jamal, a pass 10,500 feet in altitude,
with a tremendous descent into an apparent abyss, from whose blue
depths rise the imposing mass of the Kuh-i-Shahan, and among other
heights Faidun, a striking peak of naked rock, superimposed on a rocky
ridge. At this height the air was really cool, and it was an escape
from the heat of Dima.

This region seems much disturbed. We heard of bloodshed two days ago,
and to-day in the Kharba valley of fighting among the Kuh-i-Shahan
mountains with the loss of twelve lives, and horsemen passed us armed
with long guns and swords on their way to tribal war. I fear I shall
have to return to Isfahan. Things are regarded as looking very
precarious farther on, and every movement, retrograde or forward, is
beset with difficulties.

I. L. B.




LETTER XVII


     CAMP GAL-I-GAV, KUH-I-RANG, _July 2_.

From Dima we ascended to high tablelands, having the snowy Zard Kuh
ever in sight, one nameless peak being at present pure white, and
descended into and crossed the Shorab, a fertile valley, on one side
of which is the famous cleft called Kar Kanun, an artificial gash
across a spur of the Kuh-i-Rang of the same name. After winding among
mountains we descended on the Karun, whose waters, clear, rapid, and
peacock-green, fertilise a plain of fine flowery turf lying at the
base of hills, with another branch of the Karun between them and the
Zard Kuh.

It is a lovely plain, bright and smiling, contrasting with the savage
magnificence of the Zard Kuh, which comes down upon it with its peaks,
chasms, and precipices, and glittering fields of unbroken snow. It was
given up to mares and foals, but green platforms high above, and
little hollows in the foot-hills were spotted with Ilyat tents, and in
the four days which we spent there the camps were never free from
Ilyat visitors. The Sahib came in the first evening with one man badly
hurt, and another apparently in the first stage of rheumatic fever. A
small tent was rigged for this poor fellow, who was in intense pain
and quite helpless, with a temperature of 104 deg., and every joint
swollen. The usual remedies had no effect on him. I had had a present
of a small quantity of _salol_, a newish drug, with directions for
its use, and his master Hadji undertook to make him take it regularly,
and hot tea when he fancied it, and at the end of twenty-two hours he
was not only free from fever but from pain, and was able to mount a
mule.[1]

There are two definite objects of interest close to the plain of
Chaman Kushan, the reputed source of the Karun and the great
artificial cleft of Kar Kanun. I visited the first on a misty day,
which exaggerated the height of the mountains, and by filling their
chasms with translucent blue atmosphere gave a rare loveliness to the
whole, for it must be said that the beauties of Persian scenery are
usually staring, hard, and unveiled. The fords of two or three rivers,
including the Karun, some steep ascents and descents, a rough ride
along a stony slope of the Zard Kuh, and the crossing of a very solid
snow-bridge took us to the top of a cliff exactly opposite the
powerful springs in which the Karun has its reputed origin.

Over this source towers the mighty range of the Zard Kuh,--a colossal
mountain barrier, a mass of yellow and gray limestone, with stupendous
snow-filled chasms, huge precipices, and vast snow-fields, treeless
and destitute of herbage except where the tulip-studded grass runs up
to meet the moisture from the snow-fields. It is the birthplace of
innumerable torrents, but one alone finds its way to the sea.

These springs are in a lateral slit in a lofty limestone precipice
below a snow-field, at one end of which, as if from a shaft, the
most powerful of them wells up, and uniting with the others in a sort
of grotto of ferns and mosses pours over a ledge in a sheet of foam, a
powerful waterfall, and slides away, a vigorous river of a wonderful
blue-green colour, under a snow-bridge, starting full fledged on its
course. The surroundings of this spring are wild and magnificent. A
few Bakhtiaris crept across the lower part of the face of rock, and
perched themselves above it. The roar of the water, now loud, now
subdued, made wild music, and the snow-bridges added to the
impressiveness of the scene.

  [Illustration: SAR-I-CHESMEH-I-KURANG _To face p. 29, vol. II._]

Of course the geographical interest of this region is engrossing.[2]
This remarkable spring, called by the Bakhtiaris
Sar-i-Cheshmeh-i-Kurang ("the head source of the Kurang"), and until
this journey held to be the real source, is not, however, the actual
birthplace of the Karun or Kurang, which was afterwards traced up to
its headwaters in the magnificent Kuh-i-Rang.[3]

A few words on this, the one real river of which Persia can boast, and
which seems destined to play an important part in her commercial
future, will not be out of place. From its source it is a powerful and
important stream, full, deep, and flowing with great velocity for much
of its upper course between precipices varying in height from 1000 to
3000 feet. It is a perennial stream, fordable in very few places, and
then only in its upper waters. Varying in width usually from fifty to
a hundred yards, it is compressed at the Pul-i-Ali-kuh into a breadth
of about nine feet.

The steepness and height of its banks make it in general useless for
irrigation purposes, but some day it may be turned to account as a
great "water power." Its windings, dictated by the singular formation
of the mountain ranges (for I reject the idea of it having "carved"
its channel), are almost phenomenal. After flowing south-east for a
hundred miles from its source, it makes an acute bend, flows for fifty
miles to the south-west, and then making another fantastic turn it
flows in an exactly opposite direction to that of its earlier course,
proceeding north-west to Shuster for a hundred miles.

It is calculated that the distance from the Kuh-i-Rang to Shuster as
the crow flies is seventy-five miles, but the distance travelled by
the waters of the Karun is 250 miles, with an aggregate fall of 9000
feet.

Besides being fed on its journey through the Bakhtiari country by many
mountain-side fountain springs of pure fresh water, as well as by salt
streams and springs, it receives various tributaries, among the most
important of which are the Ab-i-Bazuft and a stream which, though
known locally under various names, may be called from the Chigakhor
basin in which it rises the Ab-i-Chigakhor, which makes a course of
ninety miles to get over a distance of twenty; the Darkash Warkash
flowing in from the Chahar Mahals near Ardal, the Dinarud rising in
the fair valley of Gorab, and the Ab-i-Cherri or Duab.

This mountain range, the Zard Kuh, in whose steep side at a height of
over 8000 feet the Sar-i-Cheshmeh-i-Kurang wells up so grandly, is
rather a series of rock summits and precipices than a range of
mountains. In late June its naked shelves and battlements upbore great
snow-fields, and its huge rifts or passes--the Gil-i-Shah, nearly
11,700 feet in altitude, and the Pambakal, 11,400--were full of snow.
But even in four days it melted rapidly, and probably by August little
remains except a few patches, in the highest and most sunless of the
rifts. It is only on the north side that the snow lasts even into
July.

  [Illustration: ZARD KUH RANGE. _To face p. 30, vol. II._]

The marked features of this range are its narrow wall-like character,
its ruggedness on both sides, its absence of any peaks rising very
remarkably above the ordinary jagged level of the barrier, its lack of
prominent spurs, and its almost complete nakedness. It is grand, but
only under rare atmospheric conditions can it be termed beautiful. Its
length may be about thirty miles. It runs from north-west to
south-east. Some of its highest summits attain an elevation of 13,000
feet. Its name is a corruption of Sard Kuh, "cold mountain."

After fording various snow streams and taking a break-neck goat track,
we reached the great snow pass of Gil-i-Shah, by which the Bakhtiaris
come up from the Shuster plains on the firm snow in spring, returning
when the snow is soft in autumn by a very difficult track on the rocky
ledges above. In the mist it looked the most magnificent and
stupendous pass I had ever seen, always excepting the entrance to the
Lachalang Pass in Lesser Tibet, and an atmospheric illusion raised the
mountains which guard it up to the blue sky. I much wished to reach
the summit, but in a very narrow chasm was fairly baffled by a wide
rift in a sort of elevated snow-bridge which the mule could not cross,
and camped there for some hours; but even there nomads crowded round
my tent with more audacity in their curiosity than they usually show,
and Mirza heard two of them planning an ingenious robbery.

The heat was very great when I returned, 100 deg. in the shade, but rest
was impossible, for numbers of mares and horses were tethered near my
tent, and their riders, men and women, to the number of forty, seized
on me, clamouring for medicines and eye lotions. I often wonder at the
quiet gravity of Mirza's face as he interprets their grotesque
accounts of their ailments. A son of Chiragh Ali Khan came to tell me
that the "Feringhi ointment" had cured a beautiful young woman of his
tribe of an "abscess in her nose"! An instance of real benefit hardly
consoles for many failures, and any cure increases the exhausting
number of "patients." On one day on that plain there was no rest
between eleven and five.

Small events occurred tending to show that the good order which the
Ilkhani's government secures is chiefly round the centre of rule.
Stories of tribal disputes with violence, and of fights arising out of
blood feuds came in daily, and recent sword cuts and bullet wounds
were brought to the _Hak[=i]m_. One day there was a disturbance in
camp owing to a man attacking Hassan for preventing a woman from
entering my tent in my absence. I learned very soon after coming into
this country that the Bakhtiaris are dangerously sensitive about their
women, although the latter are unveiled and have an amount of latitude
unusual in the East. I have more than once cautioned my servants on
this point, for any supposed insult to a female relative of a
Bakhtiari would have by custom to be wiped out in blood. This extreme
sensitiveness has its good side, for even in the midst of the tribal
wars and broils which are constantly occurring female honour is always
secure, and a woman can travel safely alone through the wildest
regions; a woman betraying her husband would, however, almost
certainly be put to death. One night the camps were threatened by
robbers, upon whom Aziz Khan fired.

Solitary as is now the general aspect of the surrounding country, it
must have been crowded with workmen and their food providers within
the last two centuries, for in the beginning of the seventeenth
century Shah Abbas the Great, the greatest and most patriotic of
modern Persian kings, in his anxiety to deliver Isfahan once for all
from the risk of famine, formed and partly executed the design of
turning to account the difference in level (about 300 feet) between
the Karun and Zainderud, and by cleaving an intervening mountain spur
to let the waters of the one pass into the other. The work of cleaving
was carried on by his successors, but either the workmen failed to get
through the flint which underlies the free-stone, or the downfall of
the Sufari dynasty made an end of it, and nothing remains of what
should have been a famous engineering enterprise but a huge cleft with
tool marks upon it in the crest of the hill, "in length 300 yards, in
breadth fifteen, and fifty feet deep."[4] Above it are great heaps of
quarried stones and the remains of houses, possibly of overseers, and
below are the remnants of the dam which was to have diverted the Karun
water into the cleft.

On a cool, beautiful evening I came down from this somewhat mournful
height to a very striking scene, where the peacock-blue branch from
the Sar-i-Cheshmeh unites with the peacock-green stream from
Kuh-i-Rang, the dark, high sides of their channels shutting out the
mountains. Both rivers rush tumultuously above their union, but
afterwards glide downwards in a smooth, silent volume of most
exquisite colour, so deep as to be unfordable, and fringed with green
strips of grass and innumerable flowers. On emerging from the ravine
the noble mass of the Zard Kuh was seen rose-coloured in the sunset,
its crests and spires of snow cleaving the blue sky, and the bright
waters and flower-starred grass of the plain gave a smiling welcome
home.

The next march was a very beautiful one, most of the way over the
spurs and deeply-cleft ravines of the grand Kuh-i-Rang by sheep and
goat tracks, and no tracks at all, a lonely and magnificent ride, shut
in among mountains of great height, their spurs green with tamarisk,
salvias, and euphorbias, their ravines noisy with torrents, bright
springs bursting from their sides with lawn-like grass below, and
their slopes patched with acres of deep snow, on whose margin purple
crocuses, yellow ranunculuses, and white tulips were springing. But
the grand feature of the march is not the mighty Kuh-i-Rang on the
right, but the magnificent Zard Kuh on the left, uplifting its
snow-fields and snow-crests into the blue of heaven, on the other side
of an ever-narrowing valley. At the pass of Gal-i-Gav, 11,150 (?) feet
in altitude, where we have halted for two days, the Zard Kuh
approaches the Kuh-i-Rang so closely as to leave only a very deeply
cleft ravine between them. From this pass there is a very grand view,
not only of these ranges, but of a tremendous depression into which
the pass leads, beyond which is the fine definite mountain
Kuh-i-Shahan. This pass is the watershed between the Karun and
Ab-i-Diz, though, be it remembered, the latter eventually unites with
the former at Band-i-Kir. All is treeless.

The Kuh-i-Rang is the only "real mountain" seen on the journey
hitherto. It is unlike all others, not only in its huge bulk and
gigantic and far-reaching spurs, but in being _clothed_. Its name
means the "variegated mountain." It has much Devonshire red about it,
but clad as it is now with greenery, its soil and rock ribs cannot be
investigated.

It is a mountain rich in waters, both streams and springs. It is
physically and geographically a centre, a sort of knot nearly uniting
what have been happily termed the "Outer" and "Inner" ranges of the
Bakhtiari mountains, and it manifestly divides the country into two
regions, which, for convenience' sake, have been felicitously termed
the Bakhtiari country and Upper Elam, the former lying to the
south-east and the latter to the north-west of this most important
group of peaks, only just under 13,000 feet, which passes under the
general name Kuh-i-Rang.

A prominent geographical feature of this region is that from this
point south-eastwards the valleys rim parallel with the great ranges,
and are tolerably wide and level, carrying the drainage easily and
smoothly, with plenty of room for the fairly easy tracks which usually
run on both banks of the rivers.

The reader who has followed the geographical part of my narrative
will, I hope, have perceived that the openings through the Outer and
Inner ranges in the region previously traversed are few and
remarkable, the Tang-i-Ghezi and the Tang-i-Darkash Warkash piercing
the Outer, and the Tang-i-Dupulan the Inner range.

The Kuh-i-Rang is the definite water-parting and the originating cause
of two drainage systems, and it may be seen from the map, as was
beautifully obvious from the summit of one of the peaks over 11,000
feet in height, that it marks a singular change in the "lie of the
land," inasmuch as the main drainage no longer runs parallel to the
main ranges, but cuts them across, breaking up Upper Elam into a wild
and confused sea of mountains, riven and gashed, without any attempt
at uniformity.

This cutting through the ranges at right angles by rivers which
somehow must reach the sea, probably through channels formed by some
tremendous operations of nature, presents serious obstacles to the
traveller, and must effectually prevent commerce flowing in that
direction. The aspect of Upper Elam as seen from the Kuh-i-Rang is of
huge walls of naked rock, occasionally opening out so as to give space
for such a noble mountain as the Kuh-i-Shahan, with tremendous gorges
or canyons among them, with sheer precipices 4000 and 5000 feet high,
below which blue-green torrents, crystalline in their purity, rage and
boom, thundering on their way to join the Ab-i-Diz. The valleys are
short, and elevated from 6000 to 7000 feet, and the tracks dignified
by the name of roads pass along them and at great altitudes on the
sides of the main ranges, but are compelled continually to make dips
and ascents of many thousand feet to reach and emerge from the fords
of the rivers which dash through the magnificent rifts and canyons.

To the south-east of the Kuh-i-Rang the formation is orderly and
intelligible; to the north-west all is confusion and disorder, but a
sublime confusion. Two great passes to the north and south of this
magnificent mountain are the only ways of communication between the
region of Upper Elam and the Bakhtiari country. The northern pass was
ascended from Dima. The Kharba, one of the head-streams of the
Zainderud, rises on it and fertilises a beautiful valley about
fourteen miles in length. That pass, the Gal-i-Bard-i-Jamal (the pass
of Jamal's stone), the stone being a great detached rock near the
summit, and the Gal-i-Gav (the Cattle Pass) on the southern side, are
both over 10,000 feet in altitude. They are seldom traversed by the
natives, and only in well-armed parties, as both are very dangerous.

The Kuh-i-Rang must now be regarded as the true birthplace of the
Zainderud and the Karun, though their sources have hitherto been
placed in the Zard Kuh. A tributary of the Ab-i-Diz, and locally
considered as its head-water, rises also in the Kuh-i-Rang.

  [Illustration: AZIZ KHAN.]

Aziz Khan, who had gone to his tents, has returned with a very nice
young servant and another mare, and with him noise and "go." He has
such a definite personality, and is so energetic in his movements,
that the camps are dull without him. He is a fearful beggar. He asks
me for something every day, and for things he can make no possible use
of, simply out of acquisitiveness. He has got from me among many other
things a new embroidered saddle-cloth, a double-bladed knife, an
Indian _kamarband_, many yards of silk, a large pair of scissors,
bracelets for his wife and daughter, and working materials, and now he
has set his heart on a large combination knife, which is invaluable to
me. "What use is that knife to a woman?" he asks daily. Now he says
that I have given him many things but I have never given him money,
and he must have a purse of money.

"Why can you do so much more than our women?" he often asks. His
astonishment that I can read, and yet more that I can write, is most
amusing. "Can many women in your country write?" he asked. "Can your
Queen read and write? Can she embroider as you do?" At first he
thought that I only pretended to write, but was convinced when I sent
a letter to the Ilkhani.

He usually appears when a number of sick people come, interprets their
dialect into good Persian for Mirza, and beats and pelts them with
stones when they crowd too closely, but they do not care. Sometimes
when I say that nothing that I have can do a sick person any good he
begs "for my sake" that I will try, and when I still decline he goes
away in a tantrum, cursing, and shaking his wide _shulwars_ with an
angry strut, but is soon back again with fresh demands.

He spreads his prayer-carpet and goes through his devotions thrice a
day, but somehow "Aziz Khan praying" seems to suggest some ludicrous
idea, even to his co-religionists. "Feringhis don't fear God," he said
to me; "they never worship." I told him he was wrong, that many are
very devout. He said, "Does ---- pray?" mentioning a European. I said
"Most certainly," and he walked away with the sneering laugh of a
fiend. He is a complete child of nature. He says what he thinks, and
acts chiefly as he pleases, but withal there is a gentlemanliness and
a considerable dignity about him. I think that his ruling religion is
loyalty to Isfandyar Khan, and consequent hatred of the Ilkhani and
all his other enemies. Going through a pantomimic firing of an English
rifle he said, "I hope I may shoot the Shah with this one day!" "For
what reason?" I asked. "Because he murdered Isfandyar Khan's father,
and I hate him." I asked him if he liked shooting, and he replied, "I
like shooting men!"

He has done a good deal of fighting, and has been shot through the
lung, arm, and leg, besides getting sword cuts, and he takes some
pride in showing his wounds. I think he is faithful. Mirza says that
he has smoothed many difficulties, and has put many crooked things
straight, without taking any credit to himself. His most apparent
faults are greed and a sort of selfish cunning.

There are many camps about the Gal-i-Gav, and crowds, needing very
careful watching, are always about the tents, wanting to see Feringhi
things, most of the people never having seen a Feringhi. It is a novel
sight in the evenings when long lines of brown sheep in single file
cross the snow-fields, following the shepherds into camp.

This Gal-i-Gav on the Kuh-i-Rang marks a new departure on the journey,
as well as the establishment of certain geographical facts. It will be
impossible for the future to place the source of the Karun in the Zard
Kuh range, for we followed the stream up to the Kuh-i-Rang, or to
indulge in the supposition that the mountains which lie to the
north-west are "covered with eternal snow," which in this latitude
would imply heights from 17,000 to 20,000 feet.

It is indeed a disappointment that, look where one may over the great
area filled up by huge rock barriers and vast mountains, from the
softer ridges bounding the fiery Persian plains to the last hills in
which the Inner range descends upon the great alluvial levels of
Khuzistan, not a peak presents itself in the glittering snowy mantle
which I have longed to see. Snow in forlorn patches or nearly hidden
in sunless rifts, and the snow-fields of the Zard Kuh will remain for
a time, but eternal snow is--nowhere, and it does not appear that the
highest of the peaks much exceeds 13,000 feet, either in Upper Elam or
the Bakhtiari country.

Great difficulties are ahead, not only from tracks which are said to
be impassable for laden animals, but from the disturbed state of the
country. From what I hear from Aziz Khan and from the guides who have
come up here, I gather that the power of the Ilkhani, shaky enough
even nearer Ardal, all but dwindles away here, and is limited to the
collection of the tribute, the petty Khans fighting among themselves,
and doing mainly what is right in their own eyes.

It is somewhat of a satisfaction to me that it is impossible now to go
back, and that a region absolutely unexplored lies ahead, doubtless
full, as the previously untraversed regions have been, of surprises
and interests.

     I. L. B.


FOOTNOTES:

[1] For the benefit of other travellers I add that the dose of _salol_
was ten grains every three hours. I found it equally efficacious
afterwards in several cases of acute rheumatism with fever. I hope
that the general reader will excuse the medical and surgical notes
given in these letters. I am anxious to show the great desire for
European medical aid, and the wide sphere that is open to a medical
missionary, at least for physical healing.

[2] A few geographical paragraphs which follow here and on p. 35 are
later additions to the letter.

[3] Although the correct name of this river is undoubtedly Kurang, I
have throughout adopted the ordinary spelling _Karun_, under which it
is commercially and politically known.

[4] _Six Months in Persia._--Stack.




LETTER XVIII


     CAMP GOKUN, _July 6_.

A descent of 5000 feet brought us into the grand and narrow gorge of
the Sahid stream, with willow, walnut, oak, maple, pear, and crab
along its banks, knotted together by sprays of pink roses, with oaks
higher up, and above them again overhanging mountains of naked rock,
scorched, and radiating heat.

Quite suddenly, after a steep ascent, there is a view of a steep slope
below, where a lateral ravine comes down on the Sahid, green with
crops of wheat and barley, poplars, willows, and a grove of fine
walnuts, and more wonderful still, with an _imamzada_ in good repair,
and a village, also named Sahid, in which people live all the year.
The glen is magnificent, and is the one spot that I have seen in
Persia which suggests Switzerland.

It is a steep and difficult descent through a walnut grove to the
village, and before I knew it I was on the roof of a house. The
village is built in ten steps up the steep hillside, the posts which
support one projecting roof resting on the back of the roof below.

The people were timid and suspicious, gave untrue replies to questions
at first, said we were "doing talisman to take their country," and
consulted in Aziz's and Mirza's hearing how they might rob us. It was
even difficult to get them to bring fodder for the horses. They were
fanatical and called us _Kafirs_. Some of the women have never been
out of their romantic mountain-walled hole, in which they are shut up
by snow for four months every winter. Ten families live there, each
one possessing a step. They said they owned sixty-five goats and
sheep, five cows, and seven asses; that they sell their wheat, and
salt from a salt spring at the back of the hill, and that their food
is chiefly acorn flour made into bread, curds, and wild celery.

This bread is made from the fruit of the _Quercus ballota_, which is
often nearly three inches long. The acorns are not gathered, but
picked up when they fall. The women bruise them between stones to
expel the bitter juices. They are afterwards reduced to flour, which
is well washed to remove the remaining bitterness, and dried in the
sun. It is either made into thin cakes and baked, or is mixed into a
paste with buttermilk and water and eaten raw. The baked cakes are not
very unpalatable, but the paste is nauseous. Acorn flour is never used
from choice.

The grain is exchanged for blue cottons and tobacco. It is not
possible to imagine a more isolated life. Tihran and Isfahan are names
barely known to these people, and the Shah is little more to them than
the Czar.

Near the _imamzada_ of Sahid is a burial-ground, rendered holy by the
dust of a _pir_ or saint who lies there. It has many headstones, and
one very large gray stone lion, on whose sides are rude carvings of a
gun, a sword, a dagger, a powder-flask, and a spear. On a few low
headstones a peculiar comb is carved, denoting that the grave is that
of a woman.

To several stones long locks of hair are attached, some black and
shining, others dead-looking and discoloured. It is customary for the
Bakhtiari women to sacrifice their locks to the memory of their
husbands and other near male relatives.

I think that they have a great deal of conjugal and family affection,
though their ways are rough, and that they mourn for their dead for a
considerable time. On one grave a young woman was rocking herself to
and fro, wailing with a sound like the Highland coronach, but longer
and more despairing. She was also beating her uncovered bosom
rhythmically, and had cut her face till the blood came. So apparently
absorbed was she in her grief that she took no notice of a Feringhi
and an Indian. She had been bereaved of her husband for a year, his
life having been sacrificed in a tribal fight.

The next two days were occupied in what might well be called
"mountaineering" on goat tracks; skirting great mountain spurs on
shelving paths not always wide enough for a horse's two feet alongside
of each other, with precipitous declivities of 1000 or 2000 feet;
ascending on ledges of rock to over 9000 feet, then by frightful
tracks descending 2000 or 3000 but to climb again; and at every
descent always seeing in front dizzy zigzags surmounting the crest of
some ragged ridge, only, as one knows, to descend again. _Screw_
nearly fell over backwards with me once and again, and came down a
smooth face of rock as mules sometimes come down a snow slide in
Switzerland. I was told that I should "break my neck" many times, that
no Bakhtiari had ever ridden over these tracks, or ever would, but my
hurt knee left me no choice. These tracks are simply worn by the
annual passage of the nomads and their flocks. They are frightful
beyond all description. The worst paths in Ladak and Nubra are nothing
to them.

Occasionally we traversed deep ravines with noisy torrents where the
shade was dense, and willows, ash, walnut, cherry, elm, plum, and oak
were crowded together, with the _Juniperus excelsa_ in rifts above.
With a moist climate it would be a glorious land, but even where the
scenery is finest there is always something lacking. There is no
atmosphere. All is sharp, colourless, naked. Even many of the flowers
are queer, and some are positively ugly. Many have thorns, some are
leather-like, others woolly, a few sticky. Inconspicuous flowers and
large leathery leaves are very common. The seed-vessels of some are
far prettier than the flowers, and brighter in colour. In several the
calyx grows after the corolla has withered, and becomes bright pink or
orange, like a very gay but only partially-opened blossom.
_Umbelliferae_ predominate this month. _Compositae_ too are numerous.
All, even bulbs, send down their roots very deep.

After leaving camp yesterday and crossing a high pass we descended
into the earth's interior, only to ascend a second pass by a steep
zigzag. Suddenly a wall of rock appeared as if to bar progress, but on
nearing it a narrow V-shaped slit was seen to afford a risky passage,
offering no other foothold than smooth shelving rock on the inside for
a number of yards, with a precipice above on the right and below on
the left. Ledges of slippery rock led up to it, and _Screw_ was
jumping and scrambling up these when the guides howled to me to stop,
and I was lifted off somehow. The white Arab was rolling and
struggling in the V, _Screw_ following lost his footing, and the two
presented a confusion of hoofs and legs in the air and bodies
struggling and rolling through the slit till they picked themselves up
with cut legs. The guides tried vainly to find some way by which the
caravans which followed much later might avoid this risk, and the Agha
went down the pass which had been so laboriously ascended to give
directions for its passage.

The _charvadars_ on reaching the difficulty made attempts to turn it
but failed; some loads were taken off and carried by men, and each
mule struggled safely through with one man at his head, and one or
two supporting him by his tail. The passage of the V took the caravan
an hour, but meantime there was the enjoyment of the sight of a
confused mass of mountains, whitish precipitous ranges, sun-lit, with
tremendous ravines between them, lying in the cool blue shadows of
early morning; mountains with long straight summits, mountains
snow-covered and snow-slashed, great spires of naked rock, huge ranges
buttressed by huge spurs herbage-covered, with outcrops of barren
rock,--a mighty, solitary, impressive scene, an uplifted wilderness
without a camp.

The descent of 4000 feet from this summit consists of any number of
zigzag tracks on the narrow top of the narrow ridge of one of the huge
rocky buttresses of Gartak, both sides being precipitous. Even on the
horse I was dizzy, and he went down most unwillingly, not taking any
responsibility as to finding the safest way, and depending solely on
my eye and hand. Mirza, being hampered with the care of his own mule,
was useless, and otherwise I was alone. These thready zigzags ended on
what appeared to be a precipice, from the foot of which human voices
came up, shouting to me to dismount. I did so, and got down, hanging
on to _Screw's_ bridle, and letting myself down over the ledges by my
hands for another hour, having to be careful all the time to avoid
being knocked down by his slips and jumps. I could hardly get him to
face some of the smooth broken faces of rock. A slide of gravel, a
snow-bridge, worn thin, over a torrent, and some slippery rock ledges
to scramble over by its side led to a pathless ascent through grass
and bushes. The guides and Aziz roared to me from a valley below, by
which roars I found my way down a steep hillside to the Gokun, a
mountain river of a unique and most beautiful blue-green colour,
abounding in deep pools from which it emerges in billows of cool
foam.

I forded it by a broad ford where crystal-green water glides calmly
over brown and red pebbles, with a willow-shaded margin, and as I
crossed a flock of long-bearded goats swam and jumped from rock to
rock from the other side, the whole scene an artist's dream. This
valley has magnificent pasturage, hay not yet "sun cured," long grass,
and abundant clover and vetches brightened by a profuse growth of a
small _helianthus_.

The march over the Gokun Pass and down to the Gokun river is the worst
I ever made. Had the track been in Ladak or Lahoul it would have been
marked on the Government maps "impassable for laden animals." Yet
Hadji's splendid mules, held at times by both head and tail,
accomplished it, and only minor disasters occurred. One mule had his
head gashed, Mirza had a bad fall, and broke my milk bottle, Hassan,
leading his own horse, fell twenty feet with the animal and cut his
arm, the ridge pole of my tent was broken, and is with difficulty
bandaged so as to hold, and some of the other baggage was damaged.
Hadji grumbles politely, and says that "in all time loaded mules were
never taken over such tracks," and I believe him. Aziz says that I
must be "tired of life," or I should never ride over them, and
certainly _Screw_ carried me at the peril of his life and mine.

The camps are pitched for Sunday at an altitude of 8000 feet, high
above the river--mine under the befriending shade of a colossal
natural sphinx, so remarkable that two photographs and a sketch by
Mirza were taken of it. It confronted us in a startling way, a grand
man's head with a flowing wig and a legal face, much resembling the
photographs of Lord Chancellor Hatherley.

The mules have been poorly fed for the last few days, and it is
pleasant to see them revelling in the abundant pasturage. After this
tremendous nine hours' march they came in quite cheerily, Cock o' the
Walk leading the caravan, with his fighting face on, shaking his grand
mane, and stamping as if he had not walked a mile.

The Sunday has been a very quiet one, except for the fighting of the
horses, which seem intent on murdering each other, the fussiness of
Aziz about a cut which his mare got yesterday, and for which he
expects my frequent attention, and the torment of the sand-flies,
which revel in the heat which kills the mosquitos.

_Kalahoma, July 11._--On Monday it was a pretty march from the shadow
of the sphinx through a well-irrigated and cultivated valley with many
camps, and by a high pass, to the neighbourhood of the Kuh-i-Shahan,
on which I rested for some hours at a height of 12,010 feet, the
actual summit being somewhat higher. On its north-east side the view
was hideous, of scorched, rolling gravel hills and wide scorched
valleys, with two winding streams, and some patches of wheat
surrounding two scorched mud villages.

The descent to Camp Kamarun, a deep ravine with a rapid mountain
stream, was blessed by a shower, which cooled the air, and resulted in
the only grand, stormy, wild sunset that I have seen for months. This
valley is blocked at the east end by Gargunaki, on the west by the
Kala Kuh, and the rocky ranges of Faidun and the Kuh-i-Shahan close in
its sides.

Long, long ago tradition says a certain great chief had eleven sons.
They quarrelled and divided into hostile factions of four and seven,
forming the still hostile groups of the Chahar Lang and the Haft Lang
of to-day. For some time past the ruling dynasty has been of the Haft
Lang division; Aziz also belongs to it, and we have been almost
entirely among its tribes hitherto. This ancient feud, though modified
in intensity, still exists. At this camp we were among tribes of the
Chahar Lang, and there was reason to apprehend robbery and a night
attack; so careful arrangements were made, and the men kept guard by
turns.

The following day's march, which was also pretty, included a long
descent through a cultivated valley, with willows, plums, and walnuts
growing along a stream, and a steep ascent and descent to the two
villages of Masir on well-cultivated slopes, belonging to Taimur Khan,
the chief of the powerful Magawe tribe, to whom the villagers pay what
they call a moderate "rent" in sheep, goats, and grain. They are of
the Chahar Lang, and deny that they are under the Ilkhani's rule. They
had a fight with a tribe of the Haft Lang ten days ago, killed twelve
men, had seven killed and wounded, and took some guns and horses.
These, however, they have restored at the command of the Ilkhani,
which contradicts their assertion.

They have a burial-ground with several very white lions rampant upon
it, of most noble aspect, boldly carved, and with the usual
bas-reliefs on their sides.

The camps were on a gravelly slope with a yellow glare, and the
mercury reached 105 deg. The presence of villages in this country always
indicates a comparatively warm climate, in which people can live
throughout the winter. The Scripture phrase, "maketh the outgoings of
the morning and evening to rejoice," has come to bear a clear and
vivid meaning. In this country, in this fiery latitude, life is merely
a struggle from the time the sun has been up for two hours until he
sinks very low. "There is nothing hid from the heat thereof." One
watches with dismay his flaming disc wheel into the cloudless sky, to
blaze and scintillate mercilessly there for many terrible hours,
scorching, withering, destroying, "turning a fruitful land into a
desert," bringing eye diseases in his train. With sunset, but not much
before, comes a respite, embittered by sand-flies, and life begins to
be possible; then darkness comes with a stride and the day is done.

Among the many people who came to the _Hak[=i]m_ was a man who had
received a severe sword cut in the recent fight. I disliked his
expression, and remarked on it to Mirza. On the next day's march,
though there were twelve men with the caravan, this man seized and
made off with the handsome chestnut horse Karun, which was being led.
The horse had a sore back and soon kicked off his rider and was
recovered. On the same march Mujid was attacked, and under the threat
of being stripped was obliged to give up all the money he had on his
person. On the same day some women clamorously demanded bracelets, and
when I did not give them two took hold of my bridle and one of my
foot, and were dragging me off, when on Mirza coming up they let me
go.

Marching among lower hills and broader valleys, irrigated and
cultivated, with much wood along the streams and scattered on the
lower slopes, we passed the inhabited villages of Tarsa and Sah Kala,
surrounded by patches of buckwheat, vetches, and melons, and with much
provision of _kiziks_ for fuel on their roofs, and camped by the
richly-wooded river Guwa, in a grove of fine trees, crossing its
vigorous torrent the next morning by a wicker bridge, the Pul-i-Guwa.
A long ascent among oaks, where the views of mountains and ravines
were grand, an upland meadow where I found a white bee orchis, and a
steep ascent among stones, brought us to the top of a pass 9650 feet
in altitude. On its south-west side there is a very striking view of
gorges of immense depth and steepness, through which the Guwa finds
its way. To the north-east the prospect is of a very feeble country,
which we entered by a tiresome gravelly descent, very open, composed
of low hills with outcrops of rock at their summits, irrigated
rolling valleys and plains, with deep rifts indicative of streams, and
some Magawe villages.

Our route lay across the most scorched and gravelly part of the upper
slopes of a wide valley, scantily sprinkled with blue _eryngiums_ and
a woolly species of _artemisia_, a very repulsive region, where herds
of camels, kept for breeding purposes, were grazing. On the other side
of this valley a spur of the fine mountain Jalanda projects, and on it
are the two villages and fort of Kalahoma, the residence of Taimur
Khan.

We halted below the hill while a spring was being searched for, and I
was sitting on horseback eating my lunch, a biscuit in one hand and a
cup in the other. I have mentioned the savagery of the horses, and
especially of _Hak[=i]m_, who has become like a wild beast. He was
standing fully four horse-lengths away from me, with his tail towards
me, and the guide had let go his bridle, when there was a roar or
squeal, and a momentary vision of glaring wild-beast eyes, streaming
mane, and open mouth rushing down upon me and towering above _Screw's_
head, and the next thing I remember is finding myself on the ground
with my foot in the stirrup and three men lifting me up.

I was a good deal shaken, and cut my arm badly, but mounted again, and
though falling on my head has given me a sickish headache for two
days, I have not absolutely required rest, and in camp there is no use
in "making a fuss"--if indeed there ever is.

I shall not have pleasant memories of this camp. The tents were
scarcely pitched before crowds assembled for medicine. I could get no
rest, for if I shut the tent the heat was unbearable, and if I opened
it there was the crowd, row behind row, the hindmost pushing the
foremost in, so that it was 8 P.M. before I got any food. Yesterday
morning at six I was awakened by people all round the tent, some
shaking the curtains and calling "_Hak[=i]m! Hak[=i]m!_" and though I
kept it shut till eleven, and raised the mercury to 115 deg. by doing so,
there was no rest.

From eleven o'clock till 9 P.M., except for one hour, when I was away
at the Khan's, I was "seeing patients," wishing I were a real instead
of a spurious _Hak[=i]m_, for there was so much suffering, and some of
it I knew not how to relieve. However, I was able (thanks to St.
Mary's Hospital, London) to open three whitlows and two abscesses, and
it was delightful to see the immediate relief of the sufferers. "God
is great," they all exclaimed, and the bystanders echoed, "God is
great." I dressed five neglected bullet wounds, and sewed up a gash of
doubtful origin, and with a little help from Mirza prepared
eye-lotions and medicines for seventy-three people. I asked one
badly-wounded man in what quarrel he had been shot, and he replied
that he didn't know, his Khan had told him to go and fight.

In the afternoon several very distressed people were brought from an
Armenian village ten miles off, and were laid by those who brought
them at the tent door. At five the crowd was very great and the hubbub
inconceivable, and Mirza failed to keep order in the absence of Aziz
Khan, who had gone on a pilgrimage to a neighbouring _imamzada_. The
mercury had never fallen below 100 deg. I had been standing or kneeling
for six hours, and had a racking headache, so I reluctantly shut up my
medicine chest and went by invitation to call on the Khan's wives, but
the whole crowd surrounded and followed me, swelling as it moved
along, a man with a mare with bad eyes, which had been brought ten
miles for eye-lotion, increasing the clamour by his urgency. "Khanum!
Khanum!" (lady) "Chashma!" (eyes) "Shikam!" (stomach) were shouted on
all sides, with "_Hak[=i]m! Hak[=i]m!_" The people even clutched my
clothing, and hands were raised to heaven to implore blessings on me
if I would attend to them.

The whole village of Kalahoma was out, thronging, pressing, and almost
suffocating me, and the Khan's servants who came to meet me did not or
could not disperse the people, though every man holds his life at the
Khan's disposal. These villages, which are surrounded by opium fields,
are composed of the rudest of human habitations, built of rough
stones, the walls being only five feet high. There is much
subterranean room for cattle. The stacks of such winter fodder as
celery and _Centaurea alata_, and those of _kiziks_ for fuel, are
larger than the dwellings. The latter are of conical form, and many of
them are built on the house roofs.

Taimur Khan's fort and _serai_ are in the midst of all this, and are
very poor and ruinous, but the walls are high, and they have a
_balakhana_. As I approached the ladies came out to meet me, veiled in
white cotton _chadars_. The principal wife took my hand and led me
through a hole in the wall, not to be called a doorway, into a
courtyard littered with offal and piled with stacked animal fuel, and
up some high dilapidated steps, into a small dark room, outside of
which are a very small "lobby" and a blackened ladder against the
wall, leading to the roof, on which the ladies sleep in the hot
weather. Some poor rugs covered the floor, and there were besides some
poor cotton-covered bolsters. Everything, even the dress of the
ladies, indicated poverty. The dark hot room was immediately packed
with a crowd of women, children, and babies, all appallingly dirty. It
was a relief when the Khan was announced in the distance, and they
cleared out like frightened sheep, leaving only the four wives, who
stood up at his approach, and remained standing till he was seated.

No "well-bred" Khan would pay me a visit in his _andarun_ without
sending first with his "homage" to know if I would receive him, nor
did Taimur Khan violate this rule or the other of remaining standing
until I asked him to be seated. He is a tall, very melancholy-looking
man, with a Turkish cast of face, and is dressed in the usual Persian
style. After a few ordinary commonplaces he talked politics and tribal
affairs, _apparently_ frankly, but who can say if truthfully? He knows
that I have letters from the Prime Minister, and he hoped that I might
do him some good at Tihran. As soon as important subjects superseded
trifles, the wives relapsed into complete indifference, and stared
into vacancy.

His tribe, the Magawe, is estimated at 500 families, and has been
powerful. Taimur Khan is a staunch adherent of the Ilkhani, but at
this point there is a change as to the tribute, half of which is paid
to the Ilkhani and half to the Governor of Burujird. He has many
grievances, and complains most bitterly that he and his tribe are
being ground into poverty by exactions which, he asserts, have this
year raised the tribute from 700 to 4000 _tumans_.

He asks me to do something to help him, adding that his house is in
ruins, and that he is so oppressed that he cannot build a new one, or
have any surroundings suitable to his rank. I said that I could only
send his statements to the British "Vakil" in Tihran, and he at once
asked how many horses he should present him with. I replied that the
"Vakil" would not accept anything, and that he had lately declined a
superb diamond setting in which the Shah desired to send him his
picture. The Khan raised his hands, with the exclamation "God is
great!"

Isfandyar Khan and Taimur Khan were at war some years ago, and fought
from mountain to mountain, and Taimur Khan was eventually captured,
taken to Burujird, and sent to Isfahan, where he was kept in irons
for some years, the redoubtable Aziz Khan being one of his captors.
This accounts for the disappearance of Aziz on "pilgrimage" to a
neighbouring _imamzada_, and the consequent dulness of the camp.

Among a people at once simple and revengeful, it is not unlikely that
such severities may bear their legitimate fruit if an occasion
presents itself, such as the embroilment of Persia with any other
power. Another Khan who was thrown into prison and irons by the
Zil-es-Sultan expressed himself strongly on the subject. "Five years,"
he said, holding out his muscular wrists, on which the marks of
fetters are still visible, "I wore the chains. Can I forget?" The
Bakhtiaris do not love the Persians, and are held, I think, by a
brittle thread.

I have written of the extreme poverty of the surroundings of the Khaja
Taimur or Taimur Khan. It is not a solitary instance. Throughout this
journey I am painfully impressed with the poverty of the tribesmen. As
compared with the wealth of those farther south when visited by Sir A.
H. Layard and the Baron de Bode, their condition is one of
destitution. The Ilkhani and Ilbegi have fine studs, but few of the
Khans have any horses worth looking at, and for some time past none at
all have been seen except a few belonging to the chiefs, and the men
either walk or ride very small asses.

Their cattle are few and small and their flocks insignificant when
compared with those of the Arab tribes west of the Tigris. Their tents
and furnishings are likewise extremely poor, and they live poorly,
many of them only able to procure acorn flour for bread, and this
though they grow a great deal of grain, and every yard of land is
cultivated if water is procurable.

The hospitality which those two travellers mention as a feature of the
character of the more southerly Bakhtiaris does not exist among these
people. They have, in fact, little to be hospitable with. They all
speak of better days in the times of their fathers, when they had
brood mares and horses to ride, much pastoral wealth and plenty of
_roghan_, and when their women could wear jewels and strings of coins.

On this point I believe them, though there may possibly be
exaggeration in Taimur Khan's statements. Persia has undoubtedly
tightened her grip upon them, and she is sucking their life-blood out
of them. This becomes very evident now that we have reached a point
where the government of Burujird comes in, with the infinite
unrighteousness of Persian provincial governors. It is not the tribute
fixed by the Amin-es-Sultan which these Khans complain of, but the
rapacious exactions of the local governors.

There is a "blood feud" between Taimur Khan and Aslam Khan, the chief
of the Zalaki tribe, on whose territory we shall enter to-day. A
nephew of Taimur killed a relation of Aslam, and afterwards Taimur
sheltered him from legitimate vengeance. Just now the feud is very
active, and cattle-lifting and other reprisals are going on. "Blood
feuds" are of three degrees, according to the nature of the offence.
In the first a man of the one tribe can kill a man of the other
wherever he finds him. In the second he harries his cattle and goods.
In the third he simply "boycotts" him and refuses him a passage
through his territory. The Bakhtiaris have often been called
"bloodthirsty." I doubt whether they are so, though life is of little
account, and they are reckless about spilling blood.

They have a great deal of family devotion, which in lesser degree
extends to the members of their tribe, and a Bakhtiari often spares
the life of a man who has aggrieved him owing to his fear of creating
a blood feud, which must be transmitted from father to son, and which
must affect the whole tribe. As a deterrent from acts of violence it
acts powerfully, and may account for the singular bloodlessness of
some of the tribal fights. Few men, unless carried away by a whirlwind
of fury, care to involve a tribe in the far-reaching consequences
alluded to, and bad as the custom of blood feuds is, I think there can
be no doubt that it acts as a curb upon the passions of these wild
tribesmen. "There is blood between us and them," is a phrase often
heard.

Punishments are simple and deterrent, well suited to a simple people.
When a homicide is captured he is handed over to the relatives of the
slain man, who may kill him, banish him, fine him, or pardon him. In
point of fact, "blood-money" is paid to the family of the deceased
person, and to save his life from their vengeance a homicide
frequently becomes a mendicant on the other side of the mountains till
he can gain the required sum. Moslem charity responds freely to a
claim for alms to wipe out a blood stain. The Ilkhani has a right to
fine a homicide. "Blood for blood" is a maxim very early inculcated.

The present feud between the Magawe and the Zalaki tribes is of the
first degree. It is undoubtedly a part of the truly Oriental policy of
Persia to foment tribal quarrels, and keep them going, with the object
of weakening the power of the clans, which, though less so than
formerly, is a standing menace to the central government.

On reaching camp after this visit I found a greater crowd than ever,
and as "divers of them came from far," I tried to help them till nine
o'clock, and as Aziz had returned the crowding was not so severe. He
said, "You're very tired, send these people away, you've done enough."
I answered that one had never done enough so long as one could do
more, and he made a remark which led me to ask him if he thought a
_Kafir_ could reach Paradise? He answered "Oh no!" very hastily, but
after a moment's thought said, "I don't know, God knows, _He doesn't
think as we do_, He may be more merciful than we think. If Kafirs fear
God they may have some Paradise to themselves, we don't know."

     I. L. B.




LETTER XVIII (_Continued_)[5]


     CAMP KALA KUH, _July 16_.

The call to "Boot and Saddle" was at three, and I was nearly too tired
to pack in the sultry morning air. The heat is overpowering. Khaja
Taimur no doubt had reasons for a difficulty in providing guides,
which caused delay. The track lay through pretty country, with
abounding herbage, to the village and _imamzada_ of Makhedi. There the
guide said he dared not go any farther for fear of being killed, and
after some time another was procured. During this delay a crowd of
handsome but hardship-aged women gathered round me, many of them
touching the handkerchiefs on their heads and then tapping the palms
of their hands, a significant sign, which throughout Persia, being
interpreted, means, "Give me some money."

The Agha is in the habit of gathering the little girls about him and
giving them _krans_ as from his own children, a most popular
proceeding usually; but here the people were not friendly, and very
suspicious. Even the men asked me clamorously, "Why does he give them
money? It's poisoned, it's cursed, it's to make them blind." However,
avarice prevailed over fear. The people rarely see money, and it is
not used as a medium of exchange, but they value it highly for paying
the tribute and as ornaments for the women. Barter is the custom, and
with regard to "tradesmen," whether in camps or villages, it is usual
for each family to pay so much grain annually to the blacksmith, the
carpenter, the shoemaker--_i.e._ the man who makes compressed rag or
leather soles for _ghevas_ and unites the cotton webbing ("upper") to
the sole--and the _hammam_ keeper, in the rare cases where there is
one. They were cutting wheat on July 12 there at an altitude of 7000
feet. Where there are only camps the oxen tread it out at once on the
hard soil of the fields, but where there is a village the sheaves are
brought in on donkeys' backs to a house roof of sun-dried clay, and
are there trodden out, the roofs being usually accessible from the
slope above.

We descended to a deep ford, crossed the river Ab-i-Baznoi (locally
known as Kakulistan, or "the curl," from its singular windings), there
about sixty feet wide, with clear rapid water of a sky-blue tint, very
strong, and up to the guide's waist, and entered a steep-sided stony
valley, where the heat was simply sickening. There the second guide
left us, saying he should be killed if he went any farther, but
another was willing to succeed him. After a steep ascent we emerged on
a broad rolling upland valley, deeply gashed by a stream, with the
grand range of the Kala Kuh on the south side, and low bare hills on
the north. It is now populous, the valley and hillsides are spotted
with large camps, and the question at once arose, "Hostile or
Friendly?"

I was riding as usual with Mirza behind me, when a man with a gun
rushed frantically towards me from an adjacent camp, waving his gun
and shouting, "Who are you? Why are you in our country? You're friends
of Khaja Taimur, you've given him presents, we'll rob you"! With
these and many similar words he pursued us, and men started up as by
magic, with long guns, running alongside, the low spurs became covered
with people in no time, and there was much signalling from hill to
hill, "A-hoy-hoy-hoy-hoy," and sending of messengers. Mirza pacified
them by saying that we are friends of Isfandyar Khan, and that I have
presents for Aslam Khan, their chief; but soon the shout of
"Feringhis" was raised, and from group to group along the knolls
swelled the cry of "Feringhis! Feringhis!" mixed with a few shouts of
_Kafir_; but without actual molestation we reached a steep and
uncomfortable camping-ground, Padshah-i-Zalaki, at an altitude of 7800
feet, with an extensive view of the broad green valley.

Before we halted Aslam Khan, a very fine-looking man, and others met
us, and performed feats of horsemanship, wheeling their horses in
small circles at a gallop, and firing pantomimically over their left
shoulders and right flanks. The Sahib came in later, so that our party
was a tolerably strong one.

The first thing the people did was to crowd into the shelter-tent and
lie down, staring fixedly, a thing which never happened before, and
groups steadily occupied the tops of the adjacent spurs. After my tent
was pitched the people assembled round it in such numbers, ostensibly
desiring medicine, that the Khan sent two _tufangchis_ to keep order
among them, and Karim, whose arm is now well, was added as a
protection. The Agha ordered that the people should sit in rows at the
sides and take their turn, one at a time, to come into the verandah,
but no sooner were he and Aziz Khan out of sight than they began to
crowd, to shout, and to become unmanageable, scuffling and pushing,
the _tufangchis_ pretending to beat them with the barrels of their
guns, but really encouraging them, and at length going away, saying
they could not manage them. Karim begged me to stop giving medicine,
for he was overpowered, and if he opposed them any more there would be
a fight. They had said that if he "spoke another word they would kill
him." They were perfectly good-humoured all the time, but acted like
complete savages, getting under the _flys_, tugging at the tent ropes,
and trying to pull my blankets off the bed, etc. At last the hindmost
gave a sudden push, sending the foremost tumbling into the tent and
over me, upsetting a large open packet of sulphate of zinc, just
arrived from Julfa, which was on my lap.

I left the tent to avoid further mischief, but was nearly suffocated
by their crowding and tugging my dress, shouting "_Hak[=i]m!
Hak[=i]m!_" The Sahib, who came to the rescue, and urged them in
Persian to depart, was quite powerless. In the midst of the confusion
the Khan's wives and daughter came to visit me, but I could only show
them the crowd and walk, followed by it, in the opposite direction
from the tent, till I met the Agha, whose presence restored order.
That night nearly all Hadji's _juls_ or mule blankets and a donkey
were stolen.

The Zalakis are a large and powerful tribe, predatory by habit and
tradition. Aslam Khan himself directed certain thefts from which we
suffered, and quoted a passage from the Koran not only to extenuate
but to warrant depredations on the goods of "infidels."

Sunday was spent in the hubbub of a crowd. I was suffering somewhat
from a fall, and yet more from the fatigues of Kalahoma, and longed
for rest, but the temperature of the tent when closed was 106 deg., and
when open the people crowded at the entrance, ostensibly for medicine,
but many from a pardonable and scarcely disguised curiosity to see the
"Feringhi _Hak[=i]m_," and hear her speak.

In the afternoon, with Mirza and Karim as a guard, I went somewhat
reluctantly to the Khan's camp to return the abortive visit of the
ladies. This camp consists of a number of black tents arranged in a
circle, the Khan's tents only distinguishable from the rest by their
larger size. Mares, dogs, sheep, goats, and fireholes were in the
centre, and some good-looking horses were tethered outside.

The Khan's mother, a fine, buxom, but coarse-looking woman, met me,
and took me to an open tent, fully forty feet long, the back of which
was banked up by handsome saddle-bags. Bolsters and rugs were laid in
the middle, on which the four legitimate wives and several inferior
ones, with a quantity of babies and children crawling about them, were
seated. Among them was a very handsome Jewish-looking girl of
eighteen, the Khan's daughter, pleasing in expression and graceful in
manner. She is married to a son of Taimur Khan, but he does not care
for her, and has practically discarded her, which adds insult to the
"blood feud" previously existing.

After I entered the tent the whole camp population, male and female,
crowded in, pressing upon us with clamour indescribable. The Khan's
mother slapped the wives if they attempted to speak and conducted
herself like a ruling virago, occasionally shrieking at the crowd,
while a _tufangchi_ with a heavy stick belaboured all within his
reach, and those not belaboured yelled with laughter.

The senior lady beckoned Mirza to lean towards her, and told him in a
whisper that her handsome granddaughter is hated and despised by her
husband, and has been sent back with a baby a year old, he having
taken another wife, and that she wanted me to give her a "love
philtre" that would answer the double purpose of giving her back his
love and making her rival hateful in his eyes. During this whispered
conference as many as could reach leant close to the speakers, like
the "savages" that they are. I replied that I knew of no such
philtres, that if the girl's beauty and sweetness could not retain her
husband's love there was no remedy. She said she knew I had them, and
that I kept them, as well as potions for making favourite wives ugly
and odious to their husbands, in a leather box with a gold key! Then
many headaches and sore eyes were brought, and a _samovar_ and tea,
and I distributed presents in a Babel in which anything but the most
staccato style of conversation was impossible. When I left the crowd
surged after me, and a sharp stone was thrown, which cut through my
cloak.

Later, Aslam Khan, his brothers, and the usual train of retainers
called. He is a very fine-looking man, six feet high, with a most
sinister expression, and a look at times which inspired me with the
deepest distrust of him. His robber tribe numbers 3500 souls, and he
says that he can bring 540 armed horsemen into the field. He too asked
for medicine for headache. Not only is there a blood feud between him
and Khaja Taimur, but between him and Mirab Khan, through whose valley
we must pass. In the evening the Khan's mother returned with several
women, bent on getting the "love philtre." At night Hadji, who was
watching, said that men were prowling round the tents at all hours,
and a few things were taken.

On Monday morning early all was ready, for the three caravans from
that day were to march together, and I was sitting on my horse talking
with the Sahib, waiting for the Agha to return from the Khan's camp,
when he rushed down the slope exclaiming, "There's mischief!" and I
crossed the stream and watched it. About twenty men with loaded sticks
had surrounded Mujid, and were beating him and finally got him down.
I leapt back to my own camp, where Hassan and Karim were taking a
parting smoke, and ordered them to the rescue. The soldier rushed into
the _melee_, armed with only a cane, which was broken at once, and the
Bakhtiaris got him by his thick hair, and all but forced him down; but
he fought like a bulldog, and so did Hassan, who was unarmed and got
two bad cuts. Dashed too into the fray Hadji Hussein, who fought like
a bull, followed by his muleteers and by Abbas Ali, who, being early
knocked down, hung on to a man's arm with his teeth. The Sahib, who
was endeavouring to make peace, was untouched, possibly because of his
lineage and faith, and he yelled to Mirza (who in a fight is of no
account) to run for the Agha, whose presence is worth fifty men.

Meanwhile a number of Zalakis, armed, two with guns and the rest with
loaded sticks, crowded round me, using menacing gestures and calling
me a _Kafir_, on which I took my revolver out of the holster, and very
slowly examined the chambers, though I knew well that all were loaded.
This had an excellent effect. They fell back, and were just dispersing
when over the crest of the hill cantered Aziz Khan, followed by the
Agha, who, galloping down the slope, fired a revolver twice over the
head of a man who was running away, who, having stolen a sheep, and
being caught in the act by Mujid, had begun the fray. Aslam Khan
followed, and, the men say, gave the order to fire, but recalled it on
finding that one of his tribesmen had been the aggressor. I thought he
took the matter very coolly, and he almost immediately told Mirza to
ask me for a penknife!

After this we started, the orders being for the caravans to keep well
together, and if we were absolutely attacked to "fire." After
ascending a spur of the Kala Kuh we left the track for an Ilyat camp
on a steep hill among oaks and pears, where I had promised to see a
young creature very ill of fever.

Among the trees was a small booth of four poles, roofed with celery
stalks, but without sides or ends, and in this, on a sheepskin, was a
heap out of which protruded two white wasted arms. I uncovered the
back of a head which turned slowly, and revealed, in a setting of
masses of heavy shining hair, the white face of a young girl, with
large brilliant eyes and very beautiful teeth. Her pulse was
fluttering feebly, and I told the crowd that death was very near, for
fear they should think I had poisoned her with the few drops of
stimulant that she was able to swallow. Even here the death penalty
sometimes follows the joy of maternity. She died in the evening, and
now nothing remains of the camp but a heap of ashes, for these people
always at once leave the camping-ground where a death has occurred.

Meanwhile the Agha was making friends with the people, and giving
_krans_ to the children, as is his habit. Scarcely had we left when he
found that he had been robbed of a fine pair of binocular glasses,
almost a necessity under the circumstances. English rifles,
binoculars, and watches are all coveted by the Bakhtiaris. Aziz Khan
became very grave, and full of dismal prophecies regarding the
remainder of the journey.

After this divergence the scenery was magnificent. The Kala Kuh range
is certainly finer than the Zard Kuh. It is more broken up into peaks
of definite outline, and is more deeply cut by gorges, many of them
the beds of torrents, densely wooded. In fact it is less of a _range_
and more of a _group_. The route lay among huge steep mountains of
naked rock, cut up by narrow, deep, and gigantic clefts, from whose
depths rise spires of rock and stupendous, almost perpendicular
cliffs. Green torrents flecked with foam boom through the shadows, or
flash in the sunlight, margined wherever it is possible by walnuts,
oaks, lilacs, roses, the _Lastrea dilatata_, and an entanglement of
greenery revelling in spray.

A steep zigzag descent through oak and pear trees brought us to the
vigorous torrent Ab-i-Sefid (white water), one of many of the same
name, crossed by a natural bridge of shelving rock, slippery from much
use. One of the Arabs so nearly fell on this that I dismounted, and
just as I did so Abbas Ali's mule fell on his side, and _Screw_
following did the same, breaking several things in the holster.

After crossing a deep ravine Abbas Ali sprang back down the steep to
it, and the Sahib, who was behind, also ran down with three men to
what was evidently a disaster. Mirza's mule had fallen over twenty
feet, rolling over him three times with its load, hurting his knee
badly. The Sahib said he never saw so narrow an escape from a broken
neck. The loss of a bottle containing a quart of milk was the chief
damage. A little farther up three men were tugging _Hak[=i]m_ up to
the track by the tail. It was a very steep ascent by stony broken
zigzags and ledges to the fairly level top of a spur of the Kala Kuh
range, with a high battlemented hill behind, at the back of which
dwell robber hordes, and many Seyyids, who pay no tribute, and are
generally feared.

At this open, breezy height of 9200 feet the camps have been pitched
for three days, and of the many camping-grounds which we have hitherto
occupied I like it the best, so lofty is it, so lonely, so mysterious
and unexplored. It has a glorious view of tremendous wooded ravines,
down which green waters glide or tumble, of small lawn-like plateaux
among woods, and of green peaks in the foreground, and on the other
side of the narrow, sinuous valley, several thousand feet below,
there is a confused mass of mountains, among which the snow-slashed
southern faces of the peaks of the Zard Kuh and the grand bulk of a
mountain of the Faidun range, are the most prominent.

Five thousand feet below, reached by a remarkable track, is Basnoi, a
lonely depth, with successive terraces of figs, pomegranates, and
walnuts, dense woods, and a luxuriant undergrowth of long grass and
ferns. Among them are the remains of an ancient road of good width and
construction, and of a very fine bridge of small blocks of
carefully-dressed stone, with three arches, now ruined, with fine
piers and stone abutments, the centre arch having a span of sixty
feet. The roadway of the bridge is gone, and a crazy wicker framework
is suspended in its place. The Bakhtiaris attribute these relics of an
extinct civilisation to Shapur, one of the three kings of that name
who reigned in the third and fourth centuries. All these green waters
fall into the Ab-i-Diz.

Before sunset heads of men and barrels of guns were seen over the
rocky cliff behind us. We had been warned against the outlaw tribes of
that region, and had been told that they were preparing to rob the
camp that night with thirty men, and had declared that if they failed
they would dog us till they succeeded. This news was brought by Aslam
Khan's brother in the afternoon. I asked Aziz with how much I should
reach Burujird, and he answered, "It's well if you take your life
there."

This and a whole crop of other rumours, magnified as they passed from
man to man, produced a novel excitement in the lonely camps. Hadji
buried his money, of which he had a large sum, and lay down upon it.
Rifles and revolvers were cleaned and loaded, swords and knives
sharpened, voices were loud and ceaseless, and those who were slightly
hurt in the morning's fray recounted their adventures over and over
again. All dispositions for safety were carefully made before night.
Hassan, who has a horse, and large property in good clothes, wanted a
revolver, but was wisely refused, on the ground that to arm
undisciplined men indiscriminately would be to run a great risk of
being ourselves shot in any confusion. There were then four men with
rifles, five with revolvers, and Aslam Khan's brother and two
_tufangchis_ with guns.

About eight the Bakhtiari signal-call was several times repeated, and
I wondered if it were foe or friend, till Aziz's answering signal rang
out loud and clear, announcing that it was "friends of Isfandyar
Khan." Shortly I heard, "the plot thickens," and the "friends" turned
out to be another brother of Aslam Khan, with four _tufangchis_ and a
promise of eight more, who never arrived. According to these men
reliable information had been received that Khaja Taimur, our friend
of Kalahoma, was sending forty men to rob us on Aslam Khan's territory
in order to get him into trouble.

This arrival increased the excitement among the men, who piled
tamarisk and the gum tragacanth bush on the fires most recklessly, the
wild, hooded _tufangchis_ and their long guns being picturesque in the
firelight. I am all but positively sure that the rumour was invented
by Aslam Khan, in order to show his vigilant care of guests, and
secure from their gratitude the much-coveted possession of an English
rifle. Hadji came to my tent, telling me "not to be the least afraid,
for they would not harm a lady." The Agha has a resource for every
emergency, the Sahib is cool and brave, and besides that, I strongly
suspected the whole thing to be a ruse of Aslam Khan, whom I distrust
thoroughly. At all events I was asleep very early, and was only
disturbed twice by Aziz calling to know if my servants were watching,
and was only awakened at five by the Sahib and the Agha going past my
tent, giving orders that any stranger approaching the camp was to be
warned off, and was to be fired upon if he disregarded the warning.

A blissfully quiet day followed the excitement of the night before.
The men slept after their long watch, and the fighting horses were at
a distance. The Agha did not return, and for a day and night I was the
only European in camp. Aziz Khan, with an English rifle, a hundred
cartridges, and two revolvers in his belt, kept faithful watch, and to
"make assurance doubly sure" I walked through the camp twice during
the night to see that the men on guard were awake.

Before midnight there was a frightful "row" for two hours, which
sounded as if fifty men were taking part in it. I have often wondered
at the idiotic things that Hassan does, and at the hopelessly dazed
way in which he sometimes stands. Now it has come out that he is
smoking more and more opium, and has been supplying Karim with it.

Mujid, who was formerly the Agha's cook, has been promoted to be
_major-domo_, rules the caravan on the march, heads it on a fine
horse, keeps accounts, and is generally "confidential." Karim resents
all this. He lately bought a horse because he could not bear to ride a
baggage mule when the other man was well mounted, and being that night
mad with opium, and being armed both with rifle and revolver, with
which he threatened to kill Mujid, it was only by the united and
long-continued efforts of all the men that bloodshed was prevented.
The next day Hassan destroyed his opium pipe, and is trying to cure
himself of the habit with the aid of morphia, but he complains of
"agony in the waist," which is just the fearful craving which the
disuse of the drug causes.

The Agha encountered very predatory Lurs in the lower regions. A mule
was stolen by two Lurs, then robbed from them by three, who in their
turn were obliged to surrender it to some passing Ilyats, from whom he
recovered it. While he was resting at night he was awakened by hearing
some Lurs who had joined them discussing the practicability of robbing
him, but when one told the others that he had found out that "the
Feringhi has six shots," they gave it up. At this camp we are only a
few days' march from classic ground, the ancient Elam with its capital
of Susa, and the remains of so fine a bridge, with the unusual
feature, still to be distinctly traced, of level approaches, the
adjacent ruins, and the tradition of an old-world route, a broad road
having followed the river-bed to the plains of Lower Elam, all point
to an earlier and higher civilisation. Overlooking the bridge on the
left bank of the Ab-i-Basnoi a large square enclosure, with large
stone slabs inside, was found, which had probably been used for a
cistern, and outside there were distinct traces of an aqueduct.

The "Sang Niwishta" (inscribed stone), which has been talked about for
a hundred miles, and promised to be a great discovery, was
investigated by a most laborious march, and turned out a great
disappointment. It was to be hoped, indeed it might have been
expected, that a journey through these, till now unexplored, regions
would have resulted in the discovery of additional records of the past
carved in stone, but such is not the case.

Still, it is something to have learned that even here there was once a
higher civilisation, and that in its day there was great traffic along
the Basnoi road, and that every route through this Upper Elam, whether
from north, west, or east, from the Persian highlands to the plains of
Arabistan, and the then populous banks of the Kerkhah, must have
passed through the great gap below Pul-i-Kul.

The Gokun, Sahid, Guwa, and any number of other streams fall into
this Ab-i-Basnoi, which is the channel for the drainage of far-off
Faraidan, and after a full-watered course joins the Ab-i-Burujird,
which drains the plain of Silakhor, the two forming the Ab-i-Diz, on
which the now famous town of Dizful (lit. Pul-i-Diz or Bridge of Diz)
is situated.

_Gardan-i-Gunak, July 20._--On July 17 we retraced our steps to
Padshah-i-Zalaki, and camped on a height above Aslam Khan's tents on
ground so steep that the tent floor had to be cut into steps with a
spade. Aslam Khan and others came to meet us, again performing feats
of horsemanship. No sooner were the tents pitched than the crowd
assembled, and it was another noisy and fagging day. Among the things
taken from my tent were an umbrella, knife, scissors, and most of my
slender stock of underclothing. The scissors and cotton were taken by
a young sister-in-law of the Khan, while I was attending to a terrible
hurt outside. It turns out that Aslam Khan has got the Agha's
binocular, and that he told his men to acquire a small but very
powerful telescope which he coveted. My milk bottle in a leather
sling-case has a likeness to it, and this morning as I was giving a
woman some eye-lotion her son withdrew this, almost under my eyes!

The Khan's face is a most faithful reproduction of that of Judas in
Leonardo da Vinci's "Last Supper." He is so fine-looking that one is
surprised that he should condescend to do small mean things. I sent
him the knife he asked for, and soon he called and asked for a bigger
one. He passed off his handsome daughter, the wife of Taimur Khan's
son, as his wife, in order to get, through her, a travelling-clock
which he coveted.

They brought a woman to me who might have been produced from a London
slum, ophthalmia in one eye, the other closed up and black, and behind
it and through her nose a deep wound, gaping fully an inch, blood
caked thick and black all over her face and matting her hair, her
upper lip cut through, and two teeth knocked out--a regular hospital
case. Her brother, they said, had quarrelled with her and had thrown
stones at her only the day before, but they had already filled up the
wounds with some horrible paste. I asked Sardah Khan why the Khan did
not have the man thrashed for such a brutality, and he replied that no
one would touch him, as he had killed three men last winter.

I spent two hours upon the poor creature, and the relief was so great
that her gratitude was profuse, and the blessings invoked manifold. It
was a great pleasure to me. But many things were taken out of the tent
while I sat outside attending to her. The Khan's brothers,
_tufangchis_ with their long guns, Seyyids with their green turbans
and contemptuous scowl, women, and children were all pressing upon me,
hindering and suffocating me in a temperature of nearly 100 deg. They
seem to have no feeling for pain or shrinking from painful spectacles,
and rather to enjoy the groans of the sufferer. Each time a piece of
stone was taken out of the wounds they exclaimed "God is great!"
Occasionally, when the crush interfered with what I was doing, a man
beat them with his gun, or Aziz Khan threw stones at them, but it was
useless.

The people tell our men that _Kafirs_ have never before entered their
valley, and that if we were not under the Shah's protection they would
take all that we have. I imagine that the difficulties are far greater
than I know, for the Agha, who minimises all danger, remarked last
night that this is a most anxious time, and that he should be most
thankful to get every one out of the country, for it was impossible to
say what a day might bring forth. All idea of my returning to Julfa is
now abandoned. Bad as it is it is safer to go on.

As the welcome darkness fell the hillsides near and far blazed with
fires, and Aslam Khan's camp immediately below was a very picturesque
sight, its thirty-one tents forming a circle, with the Khan's two
tents in the middle, each having a fire in front. Supper was prepared
in large pots; the men ate first, then the women, children, and dogs.
The noise suggested pandemonium. The sheep and goats bleated, the big
dogs barked, the men and women shouted and shrieked all together, at
the top of their voices, rude musical instruments brayed and
clanged,--it sounded diabolical. Doubtless the inroad of the Feringhis
was the topic of talk. Savage life does not bear a near view. Its
total lack of privacy, its rough brutality, its dirt, its undisguised
greed, its unconcealed jealousies and hatreds, its falseness, its pure
selfishness, and its treachery are all painful on a close inspection.

The following morning early we came up to the Gunak, the narrow top of
a pass in the Kala Kuh range with an altitude of 10,200 feet, crossing
on the way a steep and difficult snow-slide, and have halted here for
two days. Marching with the caravan is a necessary precaution, but a
most tedious and fatiguing arrangement. No more galloping, only a
crawl at "caravan pace," about two and a half miles an hour for five,
six, or seven hours, and though one is up at 2.45 it is fully five
before the mules are under way, and meantime one is the centre of that
everlasting crowd which, on some pretext or other, asks for medicine.
If no ailment can be produced at present, then the request is, "Give
me something from the leather box, I've a cough in the winter," or an
uncovered copper bowl is brought, the contents of which would
evaporate in a fortnight in this climate, with the plaint, "I've a
brother," or some other relative, "who has sore eyes in spring, please
give me some eye-lotion." Nothing is appreciated made from their own
valuable medicinal herbs. "Feringhi medicine" is all they care for,
and in their eyes every Feringhi is a _Hak[=i]m_.

I have often wondered that the Moslem contempt for women does not
prevent even the highest chiefs from seeking a woman's medical help,
but their own _Hak[=i]ms_, of whom there are a few, though I have
never seen any, are mostly women, and the profession is hereditary.
The men, they say, are too unsettled to be _Hak[=i]ms_. Some of these
women are renowned for their skill as bullet extractors. If a father
happens to have any medical knowledge he communicates it to his
daughter rather than to his son. Aziz's grandmother learned medicine
from a native Indian doctor in Fars, and his mother had a repute as a
bullet extractor. A woman extracted the three bullets by which he has
been wounded. The "fees" are very high, but depend entirely on the
cure. A poor man pays for the extraction of a bullet and the cure of
the wound from fifteen to twenty _tumans_ (from L5 to L6:10s.), a rich
man from forty to sixty. In all cases they only give medicine so long
as they think there is hope of recovery, and have no knowledge of any
treatment which can alleviate the sufferings of the dying. When death
seems inevitable they stuff the nose with a paste made of aromatic
herbs.

They dress wounds with an astringent paste made from a very small
gall-nut found on one species of oak. For dyspeptic pains and "bad
blood" they eat bitumen. For snake-bite, which is common, they keep
the bitten person moving about and apply the back part of live hens to
the wound till the hens cease to be affected, or else the intestines
of a goat newly killed. For rheumatism, headache, and debility they
have no remedies, but for fever they use an infusion of willow bark,
which is not efficacious. They have great faith in amulets and charms,
and in chewing and swallowing verses of the Koran in case of illness.
They are rigid "abstainers," and _arak_ is not to be procured in the
Bakhtiari country. This partly accounts for the extreme and almost
startling rapidity of the healing of surgical wounds.

Ophthalmia, glaucoma, bulging eyeballs, inflamed eyes and eyelids,
eczema, rheumatism, dyspepsia, and coughs are the prevailing maladies,
and among men, bad headaches, which they describe as periodical and
incapacitating, are common. The skin maladies and some of the eye
maladies come from dirt, and the parasites which are its offspring.
Among the common people the clothes are only washed once a year, and
then in cold water, with the root of a very sticky soap wort. They
attribute all ailments but those of the skin and eyes to "wind."
Rheumatism doubtless comes from sleeping in cotton clothing, and
little enough of it, on the damp ground.

There are no _sages femmes_. Every woman is supposed to be able to
help her neighbour in her hour of need. Maternity is easy. The mother
is often at work the day after the birth of her child, and in less
than a week regains her usual strength.

Possession by bad spirits is believed in, and cowardice is attributed
to possession. In the latter case medicine is not resorted to, but a
_mollah_ writes a text from the Koran and binds the paper on the
coward's arm. If this does not cure him he must visit a graveyard on
the night of the full moon, and pass seven times under the body of one
of the sculptured lions on the graves, repeating an Arabic prayer.

This pass gives a little rest. It is solitary, cold (the mercury 48 deg.
at 10 P.M.), and very windy. I appreciate the comparatively low
temperature all the more because the scenery beyond the Zalaki valley,
in which scorched valleys and reddish rocky ranges are repeated _ad
nauseam_, lies under a blazing sun and in a hot dust haze like that of
the Indian plains. The ridge is only just wide enough for the camps,
and falls down in abrupt descents to the source of the Ab-i-Sefid.
Tremendous precipices and the naked peaks of the Kala Kuh surround us,
and to the east the Zard Kuh and the long straight-topped range of the
Kuh-i-Gokun (or Kainu?), deeply cleft, to allow of the exit of the
Ab-i-Gokun, wall in the magnificent prospect, woods and streams and
blue and violet depths suggesting moisture and coolness. The ridge has
a remarkably rich alpine flora.

Life is now only a "struggle for existence" on the lower altitudes,
with their heat and hubbub; there is no comfort or pleasure in
occupation under 9000 feet. Here there are only the sick people of the
camps to attend to. The guides and guards all need eye-lotion, one bad
wound needs dressing, and the Khan's brother has had fever severely,
which is cured, and he offers me as a present a boy of five years old.
Aslam Khan's face of Judas is not for nothing, but his brother is
beautiful, and has the face of St. John. I. L. B.


FOOTNOTE:

[5] From Kalahoma for the rest of the route the predatory character of
the tribes, the growing weakness of the Ilkhani's authority, the
"blood feuds" and other inter-tribal quarrels, and the unsettled state
of the Feili Lurs, produced a general insecurity and continual peril
for travellers, which rendered constant vigilance and precautions
necessary, as well as an alteration of arrangements.




LETTER XIX


     CAMP SHUTURUN, _July 25_.

After that uplifted halt, which refreshed the Europeans but did not
suit the health of the attendants, we descended, crossed the Zalaki
valley and a low ridge, with populous camps, into the valley of the
Mauri Zarin, where the nomads were busy harvesting, forded the river,
and proceeded up its left bank to a dusty level on which a deep ravine
opens, _apparently_ blocked up by a castellated and nearly
inaccessible rock of great height. At this place, where the Badush
joins the Mauri Zarin, we were obliged to camp close to some Ilyat
tents, which involved crowds, many demands, much noise, and much
vigilance.

We were then in the territory of Mirab Khan, the chief of the Isawand
tribe, between whom and Aslam Khan there is a blood feud, with most
deadly enmity. He sent word that he was not well, and asked the Agha
to go to see him, which he did, telling him that the _Hak[=i]m_ would
also visit him. Later, taking Mirza and two guides, I forded and
followed up the Ab-i-Arjanak for two miles by a most remarkable canyon.
The lower part of its sides is steep and rocky, though not too steep
for the growth of tamarisk scrub and much herbage, but above are
prodigious conglomerate cliffs, and below, the river, which narrows to
a stream, is concealed by enormous masses of conglomerate rock. This
cleft must be fully 800 feet below the heights which surround it. A
ridge runs across it at Arjanak, and the river passes underground.

The village and "Diz"[6] of Mirab Khan are reached by a frightfully
steep ascent. Arjanak has been built for security on some narrow
ledges below these colossal walls. It is a mere eyrie, a collection of
rude stone hovels, one above the other, among which the Khan's house
is distinguishable only by its _balakhana_ and larger size. The paths
on the dusty hillside are so narrow and shelving that I needed a
helping hand as well as a stick to enable me to reach a small, oblong,
rug-covered platform under some willow trees, where Mirab Khan
received me, with a very repulsive-looking Seyyid scribe seated by him
in front of a _samovar_ and tea equipage, from which he produced
delicious tea, flavoured with lime-juice. The Khan was courteous,
_i.e._ he rose, and did not sit down till I did.

He is a most deplorable-looking man, very tall and thin, with faded,
lustreless gray eyes, hollow, sallow cheeks, and a very lank, ugly,
straight-haired beard, light brown in the middle. He and Khaja Taimur
look more like decayed merchants than chiefs of "tribes of armed
horsemen." I was very sorry for him, for he evidently suffers much,
but then and afterwards he impressed me unfavourably, and I much doubt
his good faith. He said he heard I should spend two or three days at
Arjanak, and all he had was mine. He was not "like some people," he
said, "who professed great friendship for people and then forgot all
about them. When I make a friendship," he said, "it is for ever." I
asked him if his tribe was at peace. "Peace," he replied
sententiously, "is a word unknown to the Bakhtiaris." In fact he has
more than one blood feud on hand. He complained bitterly of the
exactions of Persia, and added the conjecture, expressed by many
others, that England would shortly occupy Luristan, and give them
equity and security. Another Khan of some power said to me that if
England were to occupy south-west Persia, he would help her with 400
horsemen, and added, "An English fleet at Basrah, with an English army
on board, would be the best sight which Bakhtiari eyes could see."[7]

I had to hear the long story of the Khan's complicated maladies, to
look at many bad eyes, and at the wounds of a poor fellow suffering
from snake-bite, who was carried on another man's back, and to promise
to bring up my medicine chest the following day, the fame of the
"leather box" having reached Arjanak.

On my way I had called at the _haram_, and the ladies accompanied me
to the _durbar_, conduct which I think was not approved of, as they
told me the next morning that they must not go there. After the Agha
returned, the three wives and many other women clustered timidly round
me. Two of them are very bright and pretty, and one, a Persian, very
affectionate in her manner. She held my hand all the time. There was
also a handsome daughter, with a baby, the discarded wife of a son of
the next Khan. In winter, they said, they amuse themselves by singing,
and playing with their children, and by making a few clothes, and the
Persian embroiders boys' caps.

Aziz Khan has been irrepressible lately. His Arab mare is his idol,
not because she is a lovable animal and carries him well, but because
she is valuable property. He fusses about her ceaselessly, and if he
were allowed would arrange the marches and the camping-grounds with
reference solely to her well-being. She is washed from her nose to the
tip of her tail every evening, clothed, and kept by the camp-fire. She
is a dainty, heartless, frivolous creature, very graceful and pretty,
and in character much like a selfish, spoilt woman.

Unfortunately, in one of the many attempted fights among the horses,
_Screw_ kicked her on the chest and fore-leg a few days ago, which has
made a quarrel between Hadji, _Screw's_ owner, and Aziz. Now Aziz is
making me a slave to his animal. That night, after a tiring day, I was
sleeping soundly when I was awakened by Aziz saying I must come to his
mare or he would stay behind with her the next day. This is his daily
threat. So I had to bring her inside my tent, and sleepily make a
poultice and bandage the hurt. I have very little vaseline, and after
putting it twice on the slight graze on her chest, which it cured, I
said, when he asked for it a third time, that I must keep the rest for
men. "Oh," he said, "she's of more value than ten men." Lately he
said, "I don't like you at all, you give me many things, but you don't
give me money; and I don't like the Agha, he doesn't give me half
enough. I'm going back to-morrow, and then you'll be robbed of all
your things, and you'll wish you had given them to me."

When I do anything, such as opening a whitlow, which he thinks clever,
he exclaims, "May God forgive your sins!" This, and "May God forgive
the sins of your father and mother!" are ejaculations of gratitude or
surprise. One day when I had been attending to sick people for four
hours, I asked him which was the more "meritorious" act, attending to
the sick or going on pilgrimage? He replied, "For a _Kafir_ no act is
good," but soon added, "_Of a truth God doesn't think as we do_, I
don't know."

Yesterday he came for plaster, and while I cut it he saw a padlock
pincushion with a mirror front on my bed, and said, "You've given me
nothing to-day, you must give me that because my mare kicked me." But
I like him. He is a brave fellow, and with a large amount of the
mingled simplicity and cunning of a savage has a great deal of
thought, information, and ability, and a talk with him is worth
having.

Mirab Khan had promised that not only guides but his son would
accompany the Agha, but when I arrived at his eyrie the next morning
it was evident that something was wrong, for the Agha looked gloomy,
and Mirab Khan uncomfortable, and as I was dressing the wound of the
snake-bitten man, the former said, "So far as I can see, we are in a
perfect hornets' nest." Neither son nor guides were forthcoming. It
was necessary to use very decided language, after which the Khan
professed that he had withheld them in order to compel us to be his
guests, and eventually they were produced.

I called again on the ladies, who received me in a sort of open
stable, horses on one side and women on the other, in a crowd and
noise so overpowering that I was obliged to leave them, but not before
I had been asked for needles, scissors, love philtres, etc. Polygamy,
besides being an atrocious system, is very hard on a traveller's
resources. I had brought presents for four legitimate wives, but not
for the crowd of women who asked for them. Each wife wanted to get her
present unknown to the others. Later they returned my visit, and were
most importunate in their requests.

When I went to say farewell to the Khan I found him on his knees,
bowing his forehead to the earth upon a Mecca prayer-stone, and he
concluded his prayers before he spoke--not like many of us, who would
jump up ashamed and try to seem as if we never demeaned ourselves by
an act of devotion. His village, Diz Arjanak, has a Diz, or
stronghold, with a limited supply of water. It is the _raison d'etre_
of his residence there. This Diz consists of a few shelves or
cavities, chiefly artificial, scooped out in the face of the
perpendicular cliff above the village. They are only attainable by a
very difficult climb, have no internal communication, and would not
hold more than 150 people. In one cavity there is a small perennial
spring. The largest recess is said to be twelve feet deep by about
twenty long, and has a loop-holed breastwork across the entrance. In
case of attack the Khan and the people provision this hiding-place,
and retire to it, believing it impregnable.

Mirab Khan on this and a later occasion complained, and apparently
with good reason, of grinding exactions on the part of Persia. The
Isawands, like the Magawes and Zalakis, pay their tribute partly to
Burujird and partly to the Ilkhani. The sum formerly fixed and paid
was 150 _tumans_. It was raised to 300, which was paid for two years.
Now, he says, this year's demand (1890) is for 500.

We left Diz Arjanak rather late in the afternoon, ascended a valley
which opens out beyond it, forded the green bright waters of the Mauri
Zarin, and crossed beautiful open hillsides and elevated plateaux on
its right bank till we lost it in a highly picturesque gorge. Some
miles of very pleasant riding brought us to a rocky and dangerous path
along the side of a precipice above the river Badush, so narrow as to
involve the unloading of several mules, and a bad slip and narrow
escape on the part of mine. The scenery is singularly wild and severe.
Crossing the Badush, and ascending a narrow ravine through which it
flows, we camped at its source at the junction of two wild gullies,
where the Sahib, after sundry serious risks, had already arrived. We
did not see a single camp after leaving Arjanak, and were quite
unmolested during a halt of two nights; but it is an atmosphere of
danger and possible treachery.

Camp Badush, at a height of 9100 feet, though shut in by high
mountains, was cool--a barren, rocky, treeless spot. A great deal of
bituminous shale was lying about, which burned in the camp-fires
fairly well, but with a black heavy smoke and a strong smell.

The limestone fragments which lay about, on being split, emitted a
powerful odour of bitumen. Farther up the gully there is a chalybeate
spring, and the broken fragments of the adjacent rocks are much
stained with iron. After a restful halt we retraced our route by a low
path which avoided the difficult precipices above the Badush, forded
it several times, crossed a low pass, descended to the valley of the
Mauri Zarin, forded the river, and marched for some miles along its
left bank, till the valley opened on great grassy slopes, the skirts
of the rocky spurs which buttress the grand mountain Shuturun, the
"Camel Mountain," so called from its shape. It was a very
uninteresting march, through formless gravelly hills, with their
herbage all eaten down, nothing remaining but tamarisk scrub and a
coarse yellow salvia. There were neither camps nor travellers; indeed,
one need never look for camps where there is no herbage.

This is a charming camping-ground covered with fine turf, damp, I
fear, and some of the men are "down" with fever and rheumatism. There
is space to see who comes and who goes, and though the altitude is
only 8400 feet, last night was quite cool. Ischaryar, Aziz Khan's
devoted young servant, the gentlest and kindest Bakhtiari I have seen,
became quite ill of acute rheumatism with fever, and felt so very ill
and weak that he thought he was going to die. I sent some medicine to
him, but he would not take it, saying that his master had spoken
unkindly to him, and he had no wish to live. However, this morbid
frame of mind was overcome by firm dealing, and Aziz attended to him
all night, and salol, etc., are curing him.

He is the one grateful creature that I have seen among these
Orientals, and his gratitude is in return for a mere trifle. We were
fording a stream one hot day, and seeing him scooping up water with
difficulty in his hands, I took out my mug for him. Ever since he has
done anything that he can for me. He brings tasteful little bouquets
of flowers, gathers wild cherries, and shows the little courtesies
which spring from a kindly nature. He said several times to Mirza, "It
isn't only that the _Khanum_ gave me the cup, but she took trouble for
me." It may be imagined what a desert as to grateful and kindly
feeling I am living in when this trifle appears like an oasis. Hard,
cunning, unblushing greed is as painful a characteristic of the
Bakhtiaris as it is of the Persians.

Hassan is now "down with fever" and the opium craving, and one of the
_charvadars_ with fever. The cold winds of Gunak were too much for
them. All day shots have been heard among the near mountains. The
Hajwands, a powerful tribe, and the Abdulwands are fighting about a
recent cutting off of a cow's tail, but the actual cause of the feud
is deeper, and dates farther back. Aziz Khan wants us to return to Diz
Arjanak, fearing that we may become implicated, and the Agha is
calling him a coward, and telling him to ride back alone. Bang! Bang!
The firing is now close and frequent, and the dropping shots are
varied by straggling volleys. With the glasses I can see the tribesmen
loading and firing on the crests of the near hills. A great number are
engaged. One tribe has put up a stone breastwork at our end of the
valley, but the enemy is attacking the other.

3 P.M.--An hour ago Mirab Khan arrived with a number of armed horse
and footmen. Before he left he spent, I may say wasted, nearly an hour
of my time again on his maladies, and again wrote down the directions
for his medicines. Volleys fired very near startled him into
departing, and he rode hastily back to Arjanak, fearing, as he said,
an attack. Nominally, he armed the guides and the men he left behind,
but one of the guns has neither caps nor powder, and another has only
three caps. All the animals have been driven in.

4 P.M.--A man with grimy arms bare to the elbow has just run down to
the Agha's camp from the conflict. He says that his people, who are
greatly inferior to the Hajwands in numbers, thought it was the camp
of the Shah's revenue collector, and sent him to ask him to mediate.
The Agha expressed his willingness to become a mediator on certain
conditions. There is much excitement in camp, all the men who are well
crowding round this envoy, who is guilty of saying that fifty men are
to attack our camps to-night.

7.30 P.M.--The Agha, with the Sahib and Aziz Khan, three brave men
mounted and armed with rifles and revolvers, went to mediate. I went
to a knoll in the valley with some of our men, above which on either
side were hills occupied by the combatants, and a large number of
tribesmen crowned the crest of a hill lying across the ravine higher
up. The firing was frequent, but at long range, and I was near enough
to see that only one man fell.

Our party rode on till they reached the top of a low ridge, where they
dismounted, reconnoitred, and then passed out of sight, being fired on
by both parties. The tribesmen kept on firing irregularly from the
hill crests, occasionally running down the slopes, firing and running
into cover. The Sahib's _tufangchi_, who is of Cheragh Ali's tribe,
asked me, "Is this the way they fight in your country," I asked him if
he would not like to be fighting? and he replied, "Yes, if it were my
quarrel." The sun was very bright, the sky very blue, and the smoke
very white as it drifted over the lonely ravine and burst in clouds
from the hill-tops. I saw the combatants distinctly without a glass,
and heard their wild war-shouts. What a matter for regret is this
useless tribal fighting, with its dreary consequences of wailing women
and fatherless children! "Why don't the English come and take us? Why
don't the English come and give us peace?" are surely the utterances
of a tired race.

After sunset the Agha returned, having so far succeeded in his mission
that the headmen have promised to suspend hostilities for to-morrow,
but still shots are fired now and then. I. L. B.


FOOTNOTES:

[6] A "Diz" is a natural fort believed to be impregnable.

[7] To English people the Bakhtiaris profess great friendliness for
England, and the opinion has been expressed by some well-informed
writers that, in the event of an English occupation of the country,
their light horse, drilled by English officers, would prove valuable
auxiliaries. I am inclined, however, to believe that if a collision
were to occur in south-west Persia between two powers which shall be
nameless, the Bakhtiari horsemen would be sold to the highest bidder.




LETTER XX


     LAKE IRENE, _July 27_.

Yesterday we marched through narrow defiles and along hillsides to
this lake, without seeing a tent, a man, or even a sheep or goat,
following a stream which bears several names and receives several
torrents which burst, full grown, from powerful springs in the
mountain sides--a frequent phenomenon in this country--from its source
till its entrance into this lake. Its two sides differ remarkably. On
the right bank rise the magnificent ranges which form Shuturun, broken
up into precipices, deep ravines, and peaks, all rocky and shapely,
and absolutely denuded of soil. The mountains on the left bank are
great shapeless masses of bare gravel rising into the high but blunt
summit of the Sefid Kuh, with only occasional outcrops of rock; here
and there among the crevices of the rocky spurs of Shuturun the
_Juniperus excelsa_ plants itself; otherwise, on the sun-scorched
gravel only low tamarisk bushes, yellow salvias, a few belated
campanulas, and a very lovely blue _Trichodesma mollis_ remain.

On reaching the top of a very long ascent there was a unique surprise,
for below, walled in by precipitous mountain sides, lies a lake of
wonderful beauty, owing to its indescribable colour. Wild, fierce, and
rocky are the high mountains in which this gem is set, and now
verdureless, except that in some places where their steep sides enter
the water willows and hawthorns find scanty roothold. Where the river
enters the lake there is a thicket of small willows, and where it
leaves it its bright waters ripple through a wood of cherry, pear,
plum, and hawthorn. A broad high bank of gravel lies across a part of
its lower end, and all seemed so safe and solitary that I pitched my
camp here for Sunday at an unusual distance from the other camps.

"Things are not what they seem." Two armed Hajwands visited the camps,
shots were heard at intervals this morning, and in the night some of
the watch said they saw a number of men advancing towards us from
under the bushes. I heard the sharp crack of our own rifles twice, and
the Agha and Sahib calling on every one to be on the alert; the mules
were driven in, and a great fire was made, but nothing came of it.
To-night Mirab Khan's guides, who have been with us for some days,
have gone back, journeying at night and hiding in caves by day for
fear of being attacked.

This lovely lake, having no native name, will be known henceforward
geographically as Lake Irene. Its waters lie in depths of sapphire
blue, with streaks and shallows of green, but what a green! Surely
without a rival on earth! Were a pea transparent, vivid, full of
points and flashes of interior light, that would be the nearest
approach to the colour, which changes never, while through the blazing
hours the blue of the great depths in the centre has altered from
sapphire to turquoise, and from turquoise to lapis-lazuli, one end and
one side being permanently bordered round the margin with liquid
emerald. The mountains have changed from rose to blue, from blue to
gray, from gray to yellow, and are now flushing into pink. It is a
carnival of colour, before the dusty browns and dusty grays which are
to come.

_Camp Sarawand, July 29._--To-day's march has been a change from the
grand scenery of the Bakhtiari mountains to low passes and gravelly
spurs, which sink down upon a plain. A blazing hillside; a mountain of
gravel among others of similar ugliness, sprinkled with camel thorn
and thistles; a steep and long descent to a stream; ripe wheat on some
irrigated slopes; above these the hundred hovels of the village of
Sarawand clinging one above another to the hillside, their white clay
roofs intolerable in the fierce light; more scorched gravel hills
breaking off abruptly, and then a blazing plain, in a mist of dust and
heat, and low hills on the farther side seen through a brown haze,
make up the view from my tent. The plain is Silakhor in Persia proper,
and, _nolens volens_, that heat and dust must shortly be encountered
in the hottest month of the year. Meanwhile the mercury is at 105 deg. in
the tent.

Outside is a noisy crowd of a mixed race, more Persian than Lur, row
behind row. The _ketchuda_ said if I would stand outside and show
myself the people would be pacified, but the desired result was not
attained, and the crushing and pushing were fearful--not that the
people here or elsewhere are ever rude, it is simply that their
curiosity is not restrained by those rules which govern ours. The Agha
tried to create a diversion by putting a large musical box at a little
distance, but they did not care for it. I attempted to give each woman
a card of china buttons, which they like for sewing on the caps of
their children, but the crush was so overpowering that I was obliged
to leave it to Aziz. Then came the sick people with their many woes
and wants, and though now at sunset they have all gone, Aziz comes in
every few minutes with the laugh of a lost spirit, bringing a fresh
copper bowl for eye lotion, quite pleased to think of my annoyance at
being constantly dragged up from my writing.

_Camp Parwez, July 31._--We left early in the morning, _en route_ for
the fort of Yahya Khan, the powerful chief of the Pulawand tribe, with
a tall, well-dressed, and very respectable-looking man, Bagha Khan,
one of his many fathers-in-law, the father of the present "reigning
favourite," as guide. It was a very pretty track, pursuing sheep-paths
over steep spurs of Parwez, and along the narrow crests of ridges,
always with fine views. On reaching an alpine valley, rich in flowers,
we halted till the caravan approached, and then rode on, the "we" that
day being the guide on foot, and the Agha, the Sahib, Aziz Khan,
Mirza, and myself on horseback in single file. Three men looked over
the crest of a ridge to the left and disappeared abruptly, and I
remarked to Mirza that this was the most suspicious circumstance we
had yet seen. There was one man on the hill to the right, with whom
the guide exchanged some sentences in patois.

The valley opened out on the stony side of a hill, which had to be
crossed. As we climbed it was crested with a number of men with long
guns. Presently a number of shots were fired at us, and the reloading
of the guns was distinctly seen. The order was given to "scatter" and
proceed slowly. When the first shot was fired Bagha Khan, who must
have been well known to all his tribesmen, dodged under a rock. Then
came an irregular volley from a number of guns, and the whistle and
thud of bullets over and among us showed that the tribesmen, whatever
were their intentions, were in earnest. To this volley the Agha
replied by a rifle shot which passed close over their heads, but again
they reloaded rapidly. We halted, and Aziz Khan was sent up to parley
with them. No one could doubt his courage after that solitary ascent
in the very face of the guns.

Karim cantered up, anxious to fight, Mujid and Hassan, much excited,
dashed up, and we rode on slowly, Hadji and his _charvadars_ bringing
up the caravan as steadily as if there were no danger ahead. Not a man
showed the "white feather," though most, like myself, were "under
fire" for the first time. When we reached the crest of the pass such a
wild lot crowded about us, their guns yet hot from firing upon us.
Such queer arms they had--one gun with a flint lock a century old,
with the "Tower mark" upon it, loaded sticks, and long knives. With
much talking and excitement they accompanied us to this
camping-ground.[8]

The men varied considerably in their stories. They were frightened,
they said, and fired because they thought we were come to harm them.
At first I was sorry for them, and regarded them as merely defending
their "hearths and homes," for in the alpine valley behind the hill
are their black tents, their families, their flocks and herds--their
world, in fact. But they told another story, and said they took us for
a party of Hajwands. This was untenable, and the Agha told them that
they knew that Hajwands do not ride on English saddles, and carry
white umbrellas, and march with big caravans of mules. To me, when
they desired my services, they said that had they known that one of
the party was a _Hak[=i]m_ they never would have fired.

Later, from Hadji and others I have heard what I think may be the true
version of the affair. They knew that the party was a small one--only
three rifles; that on the fifteen baggage-animals there were things
which they specially covet, the value of which rumour had doubtless
magnified a hundredfold; and that we had no escort. Behind were a
number of the Sarawand men, and the Pulawands purposed, if we turned
back or showed the "white feather" in any way, to double us up between
the two parties and rob the caravan at discretion. The Agha was
obliged to speak very severely to them, telling them that firing on
travellers is a grave offence, and deserves as such to be represented
to the Governor of Burujird. I cannot acquit the demure-looking guide
of complicity in this transaction.

At this height of 9400 feet there is a pleasant plain, on which our
assailants are camped, and our camps are on platforms in a gully near
the top of Parwez. It is all very destitute of springs or streams, and
we have only snow-water, and that only during the hot hours of the
day, for ourselves and the animals.

The tribes among which we are now are powerful and very predatory in
their habits. Their loyalty to the Ilkhani is shadowy, and their
allegiance to the Shah consists in the payment of tribute, which
cannot in all cases be exacted. Indeed, I think that both in Tihran
and Isfahan there is only imperfect information as to the attitude of
the Bakhtiari Lurs. Their unification under the rule of the Ilkhani
grows more and more incomplete as the distance from Isfahan increases,
and these tribes, which are under the government of Burujird
nominally, are practically not under the Ilkhani at all. Blood feuds,
predatory raids, Khans at war with each other, tribal disputes and
hostilities, are nearly universal. It is not for the interest of
Persia to produce by her misrule and intrigues such a chronic state
of insecurity as makes the tribes desire any foreign interference
which will give them security and rest, and relieve them from the
oppressive exactions of the Persian governors.

On a recent march I was riding alone in advance of the caravan when I
met two men, one mounted, the other on foot. The pedestrian could not
have been passed anywhere unnoticed. He looked like a Sicilian
brigand, very handsome and well dressed, walked with a long elastic
stride, and was armed with a double-barrelled gun and two revolvers.
He looked hard at me, with a jolly but not unfriendly look, and then
seeing the caravan, passed on. This was Jiji, a great robber Khan of
the Hajwand tribe, whose name inspires much fear. Afterwards he met
Aziz Khan, and sent this picturesque message: "Sorry to have missed
you in my own country, as I should have liked to have left you
standing in your skins."

I went up the Kuh-i-Parwez with Bagha Khan, the guide of whom I have
such grave suspicions, in the early morning, when the cool blue
shadows were still lying in the ravines. Parwez, which on this side is
an uninteresting mountain of herbage-covered gravelly slopes, falls
down 4300 feet to the Holiwar valley on the other in a series of
tremendous battlemented precipices of dark conglomerate rock.

The level summit of Parwez, though about 11,000 feet in altitude, is
as uninteresting as the shapeless slopes by which we ascended it, but
this dip on the southern side is wonderful, and is carried on to the
gap of Bahrain, where it has a perpendicular scarp from its summit to
the river of 5000 feet, and as it grandly terminates the Outer range,
it looks like a glorious headland abutting on the Silakhor plain.

As a panoramic view it is the finest I have had from any mountain,
taking in the great Shuturun range--the wide cultivated plain of
Silakhor, with its many villages; the winding Ab-i-Diz, its yellow
crops, hardly distinguishable from the yellow soil and hazy yellow
hills whose many spurs descend upon the plain--all merged in a haze of
dust and heat. The eye is not tempted to linger long upon that
specimen of a Persian summer landscape, but turns with relief to the
other side of the ridge, to a confused mass of mountains of great
height, built up of precipices of solid rock, dark gray, weathered
into black and denuded of soil, a mystery of chasms, rifts, and
river-beds, sheltering and feeding predatory tribes, but unknown to
the rest of the world.

The chaos of mountain summits, chasms, and precipices is very
remarkable, merging into lower and less definite ranges, with alpine
meadows at great heights, and ravines much wooded, where charcoal is
burned and carried to Burujird and Hamadan. Among the salient points
of this singular landscape are the mighty Shuturun range, the peak of
Kuh-i-Kargun on the other side of the Silakhor plain, the river which
comes down from Lake Irene, the Holiwar, with the fantastic range of
the Kuh-i-Haft-Kuh (seven peaks) on its left bank, descending abruptly
to the Ab-i-Zaz, beyond which again rises the equally precipitous
range of the Kuh-i-Ruhbar. Near the Holiwar valley is a mountain
formed by a singular arrangement of rocky buttresses, surmounted by a
tooth-like rock, the Tuk-i-Karu, of which the guide told the legend
that in "ancient times" a merchant did a large trade in a tent at the
top of it, and before he died buried his treasure underneath it.

A very striking object from the top is the gorge or canyon, the
Tang-i-Bahrain, by which the Ab-i-Burujird leaves the plain of
Silakhor and enters upon its rough and fretted passage through
ravines, for the most part inaccessible except to practised Ilyat
mountaineers.

"Had I come up to dig for the hidden treasure of Tuk-i-Karu?" the
guide asked. "Was I seeking gold? Or was I searching for medicine
plants to sell in Feringhistan?"

The three days here have been rather lively. The information
concerning routes has been singularly contradictory. There is a path
which descends over 4000 feet to the Holiwar valley, through which,
for certain reasons, it is desirable to pass. Some say it is
absolutely impassable for laden mules, others that it can be traversed
with precautions, others again that they would not take even their
asses down; that there are shelving rocks, and that if a mule slipped
it would go down to ----. Hadji with much force urges that we should
descend to the plain, and go by a comparatively safe route to
Khuramabad, leave the heavy baggage there, and get a strong escort of
_sowars_ from the Governor for the country of the Pulawands. There is
much that is plausible in this plan, the Sahib approves of it, and the
Agha, with whom the decision rests, has taken it into very careful
consideration, but I am thoroughly averse to it, though I say nothing.

Hadji says he cannot risk his mules on the path down to the Holiwar
valley. I could have filled pages with the difficulties which have
been grappled with during the last few weeks of the journey as to
guides, routes, perils, etc., two or three hours of every day being
occupied in the attempt to elicit truth from men who, from either
inherent vagueness and inaccuracy or from a deliberate intention to
deceive, contradict both themselves and each other, but on this
occasion the difficulties have been greater than ever; the order of
march has been changed five times, and we have been obliged to remain
here because the Agha has not considered that the information he has
obtained has warranted him in coming to a decision.

Yesterday evening the balance of opinion was definitely against the
Holiwar route, and Hadji was so vehemently against it that he shook a
man who said it was passable. This morning the Sahib with a guide and
Abbas Ali examined the road. The Sahib thought it was passable. Abbas
Ali said that the mules would slip off the shelving rocks. All day
long there have been Lur visitors, some saying one thing, and some
another, but a dream last night reconciled Hadji to take the route,
and the Agha after carefully weighing the risks all round has decided
upon it.

All these pros and cons have been very interesting, and there have
been various little incidents. I have had many visitors and "patients"
from the neighbouring camp, and among them three of the men who fired
upon us.

The trifle of greatest magnitude was the illness of Aziz's mare, the
result of a kick from _Screw_. She had an enormous swelling from knee
to shoulder, could not sleep, and could hardly eat, and as she belongs
partly to Isfandyar Khan, Aziz Khan has been distracted about her, and
has distracted me by constant appeals to me to open what seemed an
abscess. I had not the courage for this, but it was done, and the cut
bled so profusely that a pad, a stone, and a bandage had to be
applied. Unfortunately there was no relief from this venture, and Aziz
"worrited" me out of my tent three times in the night to look at the
creature. Besides that, he had about twenty ailing people outside the
tent at 6 A.M., always sending to me to "come at once."

He was told to wash the wound, but he would do nothing till I went out
with my appliances, very grudgingly, I admit. The sweet animal was
indeed suffering, and the swelling was much increased. A number of men
were standing round her, and when I told Aziz to remove the clot from
the wound, they insisted that she would bleed to death, and so the
pros and cons went on till Aziz said, "The _Khanum_ shall do it, these
Feringhi _Hak[=i]ms_ know everything." To be regarded as a _Hak[=i]m_
on the slenderest possible foundation is distressing, but to be
regarded as a "vet" without any foundation at all is far worse.

However, the clot was removed, and though the wound was three inches
long there was still no relief, and Aziz said solemnly, "Now do what
you think best." Very gradual pressure at the back of the leg brought
out a black solid mass weighing fully a pound. "God is great!"
exclaimed the bystanders. "May God forgive your sins!" cried Aziz, and
fell at my feet with a genuine impulse of gratitude. He insists that
"a pound of flesh" came out of the swelling. The wound is now syringed
every few hours, and Aziz is learning how to do this, and to dress it.
The mare can both eat and sleep, and will soon be well.

This evening Aziz said that fifteen _tumans_ would be the charge for
curing his mare, and that, he says, is my present to him. He told me
he wanted me to consider something very thoroughly, and not to answer
hastily. He said, "We're a poor people, we have no money, but we have
plenty of food. We have women who take out bullets, but in all our
nation there is no _Hak[=i]m_ who knows the wisdom of the Feringhis.
Your medicines are good, and have healed many of our people, and
though a _Kafir_ we like you well and will do your bidding. The Agha
speaks of sending a _Hak[=i]m_ among us next year, but you are here,
and though you are old you can ride, and eat our food, and you love
our people. You have your tent, Isfandyar Khan will give you a horse
of pure pedigree, dwell among us till you are very old, and be our
_Hak[=i]m_, and teach us the wisdom of the Feringhis." Then, as if a
sudden thought had struck him, he added, "And you can cure mules and
mares, and get much money, and when you go back to Feringhistan you'll
be very rich."

In nearly every camp I have an evening "gossip" with the guides and
others of the tribesmen, and, in the absence of news from the larger
world, have become intensely interested in Bakhtiari life as it is
pictured for me in their simple narratives of recent forays, of
growing tribal feuds and their causes, of blood feuds, and of bloody
fights, arising out of trivial disputes regarding camping-grounds,
right of pasture, right to a wounded bird, and things more trivial
still. They are savages at heart. They take a pride in bloodshed,
though they say they are tired of it and would like to live at peace,
and there would be more killing than there is were it not for the
aversion which some of them feel to the creation of a blood feud. When
they do fight, "the life of a man is as the life of a sheep," as the
Persian proverb runs. Mirza says that among themselves their talk is
chiefly of guns and fighting. The affairs of the mountains are very
interesting, and so is the keen antagonism between the adherents of
the Ilkani and those of Isfandyar Khan.

Sometimes the conversation takes a religious turn. I think I wronged
Aziz Khan in an earlier letter. He is in his way much more religious
than I thought him. A day or two ago I was asking him his beliefs
regarding a future state, which he explained at much length, and which
involve progressive beatitudes of the spirit through a course of one
hundred years. He laid down times and seasons very definitely, and was
obviously in earnest, when two Magawe men who were standing by broke
in indignantly, saying, "Aziz Khan, how dare you speak thus? These
things belong to God, the Judge, He knows, we don't--we see the spirit
fly away to judgment and we know no more. God is great, He alone
knows."

Apparently they have no idea generally of a future except that the
spirit goes either to heaven or hell, according to its works in the
flesh. Some say that they are told that there is an intermediate place
called _Barjakh_, known as the place of evil spirits, in which those
who have died in sin undergo a probation with the possibility of
beneficent results.

On asking what is meant by sin the replies all have the same
tendency,--cowardice, breaches of the seventh commandment (which,
however, seem to be so rare as scarcely to be taken into account,
possibly because of the death penalty attaching to them), disobedience
to a chief when he calls on them to go to war, fraternising with
Sunnis, who are "accursed," betraying to an enemy a man of their own
tribe, and compassing the death of another by poison or evil
machinations.

On being asked what deeds are good, bravery is put first, readiness to
take up a tribal quarrel, charity, i.e. kindness to the poor, undying
hatred to the Caliph Omar, shown by ostracising the Sunnis, hatred of
_Kafirs_, and pilgrimages, especially to Mecca.

Death in battle ensures an immediate entrance into heaven, and this is
regarded as such a cause of rejoicing that not only is the _chapi_ or
national dance performed at a fighting man's grave, but if his death
at a distance has been lawful, _i.e._ if he has been killed in
fighting, they put up a rude temporary cenotaph with his gun, cap,
knife, pipe, and other things about it, and dance, sing, and rejoice.

Otherwise their burial rites are simple. The corpse is washed seven
times in water, certain Arabic formulas for the repose of the soul are
recited, and the body, clothed and wrapped in a winding-sheet, is
carried by four men to the burying-place on a bier extemporised out of
tent-poles, and is buried in a shallow grave. It is not customary now
to rejoice at the graves of women or old men, unless the latter have
been distinguished warriors.

So far as I can learn, even in the case of the deaths of fighting men,
when the _chapi_ is danced at the grave, the women keep up the
ordinary ceremonial of mourning, which is very striking. They howl and
wail, beating their breasts rhythmically, keeping time with their
feet, tearing their hair and gashing their faces with sharp flints,
cutting off also their long locks and trampling upon them with piteous
cries. This last bitter token of mourning is confined to the deaths of
a husband and a first-born son, and the locks so ruthlessly treated
are afterwards attached to the tombstone.

Mourning for a husband, child, or parent lasts a year, and the
anniversary of the death is kept with the same ceremonies which marked
the beginning of the period of mourning. In the case of a great man
who has died fighting, the women of his tribe wail and beat their
breasts on this anniversary for many subsequent years.

Nothing is buried with the corpse, and nothing is placed on the grave,
but it is the universal custom to put a stone at the head of the body,
which is always buried facing Mecca-wards. To this position they
attach great importance, and they covet my compass because it would
enable them at any point to find the position of the Kiblah. A comb or
distaff rudely carved on a woman's headstone, and the implements of
war or hunting on that of a man, are common, and few burial-places are
without one or more of the uncouth stone lions to which frequent
reference has been made.

The graveyards are very numerous, and are usually on small elevations
by the roadside, so that passers-by, if they be Hadjis, may pray for
the repose of the soul. It must be understood that prayer consists in
the repetition of certain formulas in Arabic, which very few if any
of these people understand.[9]

As to the great matter of their religion, on which I have taken
infinite trouble to gain information, I can come to no satisfactory
conclusion. I think that they have very little, and that what they
have consists in a fusion of some of the tenets of Islam with a few
relics of a nature worship, not less rude than that of the Ainos of
Yezo and other aboriginal tribes.

They are Shiahs, that is, they hate the Sunnis, and though the belief
in Persia that they compel any one entering their country to swear
eternal hatred to Omar is not absolutely correct, this hate is an
essential part of their religion. They hold the unity of God, and that
Mohammed was His prophet; but practically, though they are not Ali
Ilahis, they place Ali on as high a pedestal as Mohammed. They are
utterly lax in observing the precepts of the Koran, even prayer at the
canonical hours is very rarely practised, and then chiefly by Seyyids
and Hadjis. It has been said that the women are devout, but I think
that this is a mistake. Many of them have said to me, "Women have no
religion, for women won't live again."

Those of the Khans who can read, and who have made pilgrimages to
Mecca, such as the Hadji Ilkhani, Khaja Taimur, and Mirab Khan,
observe the times of prayer and read the Koran, and when they are so
engaged they allow of no interruption, but these are remarkable
exceptions.

Pilgrimages and visits to _imamzadas_ are lightly undertaken, either
for the accumulation of merit, or to wash away the few misdeeds which
they regard as sin, or in the hope of gaining an advantage over an
enemy.

They regard certain stones, trees, hill-tops, and springs as "sacred,"
but it is difficult to define the very vague ideas which they attach
to them. I am inclined to think that they look on them as the abodes
of genii, always malignant, and requiring to be propitiated. In
passing such places they use a formula equivalent to "May God avert
evil," and it is common, as in Nubra and Ladak, to hang pieces of rag
on such trees and stones as offerings to the _genius loci_.

They regard certain places as possibly haunted by spirits, always
evil, and never those of the departed; but this can scarcely be termed
a belief, as it is lightly held, and quite uninfluential, except in
preventing them from passing such places alone in the darkness.

The opinions concerning God represent Him chiefly as a personification
of a fate, to which they must bow, and as a Judge, to whom, in some
mysterious way, they must account after death. Earthly justice appears
to them as a commodity to be bought and sold, as among the Persians,
or as it is among themselves, as severity solely, without a sentiment
of mercy; and I have asked them often if they think that anything will
be able to affect the judgment of the Judge of all, in case it should
go against them. Usually they reply in the negative, but a few say
that Ali, the Lieutenant of God, will ask for mercy for them, and that
he will not be refused.

Of God as a moral being I think they have little conception, and less
of the Creator as an object of love. Of holiness as an attribute of
God they have no idea. Their ejaculation, "God is good," has really no
meaning. Charity, under the term "goodness," they attribute to God.
But they have no notion of moral requirements on the part of the
Creator, or of sin as the breaking of any laws which He has laid down.
They concern themselves about the requirements of religion in this
life and about the future of the soul as little as is possible, and
they narrow salvation within the limits of the Shiah sect.

After Mohammed and Ali they speak of Moses, Abraham, and Jesus as
"Prophets," but of Moses as a lawgiver, and of Jesus as aught else but
a healer, they seem quite ignorant.

And so they pass away, generation after generation, ignorant of the
Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, of the love to God and
man which is alone the fulfilling of the law, and of the light which
He, who is the resurrection and the life, has shed upon the destiny of
the human spirit.

Generally I find them quite willing to talk on these subjects; but one
man said contemptuously, "What has a _Kafir_ to do with God?" The
women know nothing, and, except among the sons of the leading Khans,
there is no instruction in the Koran given to the children. If I have
interpreted their views correctly they must be among the most ignorant
of the races bound by the faith of Islam.

_Khuramabad, August 6._--Leaving the camp on Parwez, and skirting the
gravelly slopes on the north side of its ridge, a sudden dip over the
crest took us among great cliffs of conglomerate, with steep gravelly
slopes below, much covered with oaks growing out of scorched soil.
Grooves, slides, broken ledges, and shelving faces of rock have to be
descended. One part is awfully bad, and every available man and some
passing Bakhtiaris (who wanted to be paid in advance for their
services) went back to help the animals. The _charvadars_ shouted and
yelled, and the horses and some of the mules were taken by their heads
and tails, but though nearly every man had a fall, horses, asses,
mules, and a sheep which follows _Hak[=i]m_ got over that part safely.
It was a fine sight, thirty animals coming down, what looked from
below, a precipice, led by Hadji leading Cock o' the Walk, shaking his
tasselled head, and as full of pride and fire as usual, and the mules
looking wisely, choosing their way, and leaping dexterously upon and
among the rocks. It is not a route for laden animals, but personally,
as I had two men to help me, I did not find it so risky or severe as
the descent of the Gokun Pass.

Below these conglomerate precipices are steep and dangerous zigzags,
which I was obliged to ride down, and there we were not so fortunate,
for Hadji's big saddle-mule slipped, and being unable to recover
herself fell over the edge some hundred feet and was killed
instantaneously.

The descent of the southern face of Parwez, abrupt and dangerous most
of the way, is over 4300 feet. The track proceeds down the Holiwar
valley, brightened by a river of clear green water, descending from
Lake Irene. Having forded this, we camped on its left bank on a
gravelly platform at the edge of the oak woods which clothe the lower
spurs of the grand Kuh-i-Haft-Kuh, with a magnificent view of the gray
battlemented precipices of Parwez. The valley is beautiful, and acres
of withered flowers suggested what its brief spring loveliness must
be, but its altitude is only 5150 feet, and the mercury in the shade
was 104 deg., the radiation from the rock and gravel terrible, and the
sand-flies made rest impossible. At midnight the mercury stood at 90 deg.
There were no Bakhtiaris, but two or three patches of scorched-up
wheat, not worth cutting, evidenced their occasional presence. Among
these perished crops, revelling in blazing soil and air like the
breath of a furnace, grew the blue _centaurea_ and the scarlet poppy,
the world-wide attendants upon grain; and where other things were
burned, the familiar rose-coloured "sweet william," a white-fringed
_dianthus_, and a gigantic yellow mullein audaciously braved the heat.

No one slept that night because of the sand-flies and the need for
keeping a vigilant watch. Indeed, the tents were packed shortly after
sunset, and in a hot dawn we ascended to a considerable height above
the valley, and then for many miles followed a stream in a wooded
glen, where willows, planes, vines, rank grass, and a handsome yellow
pea grew luxuriantly, looped together continually by the fragile
_Clematis orientalis_. All that country would be pretty had it
moisture and "atmosphere." The hillsides are covered with oaks and the
_Paliurus aculeatus_ on their lower slopes, rising out of withered
flowers. All else is uncut sun-cured hay, and its pale uniform buff
colour is soft, and an improvement on the glare of bare gravel.

Delays, occasioned by the caravan being misled by the guide, took us
into the heat of the day, and before the narrow valley opened out into
the basin surrounded by wooded spurs of hills in which Khanabad
stands, it was noon. Men and animals suffered from the heat and length
of that march. In the middle of this basin there is a good deal of
cultivation, and opium, wheat, cotton, melons, grapes, and cucumbers
grow well. Rice has already succeeded wheat, and will be reaped in
November. Kalla Khanabad, the fort dwelling of Yahya Khan, with
terraces of poplars, mulberries, pomegranates, and apricots below it,
makes a good centre of a rather pretty view. Leaving it on the right
we turned up a narrow valley with a small stream and irrigation
channels, and close to a spring and some magnificent plane trees
camped for Sunday on a level piece of blazing ground where the mercury
stood at 106 deg. on both days. This spot was remarkable for some very
fine _eryngiums_ growing by the stream, with blossoms of a beautiful
"French blue," the size of a Seville orange.

The Khan's son, a most unprepossessing young man, called on me, and I
received him under the trees, a number of retainers armed with long
guns standing round the edge of the carpet. He was well dressed, but a
savage in speech and deportment. As to the dress of the Bakhtiaris,
the ordinary tribesmen wear coarse cotton shirts fastening at the
side, but generally unfastened, blue cotton trousers, each leg two
yards wide, loose at the bottom and drawn on a string at the top,
webbing shoes, worsted socks if any, woollen girdles with a Kashmir
pattern, and huge loose brown felt coats or cloaks with long sleeves,
costing from fifteen to twenty-five _krans_ each, and wearing for
three or four years. The Khans frequently have their _shulwars_ of
black silk, and wear the ordinary Persian full-skirted coat, usually
black, but "for best" one of fine blue or fawn cloth. All wear brown
or white felt skull-caps, and shave their heads for a width of five
inches from the brow to the nape of the neck, leaving long side-locks.
The girdle supplies the place of pockets, and in it are deposited
knives, the pipe, the tobacco-pouch, the flint and steel, and various
etceteras.

Every man carries a long smooth-bore gun slung from his left shoulder,
or a stout shillelagh, or a stick split and loaded at one end (the
split being secured with strong leather), or all these weapons of
offence and defence at once.

These very wide _shulwars_, much like the "divided garment," are not
convenient in rough walking, and on the march a piece of the hem on
the outer side is tucked into the girdle, producing at once the neat
effect of knickerbockers.

The men are very well made. I have never seen deformity or lameness
except from bullet wounds. They are not usually above the middle
height, though that is exceeded by the men of the Zalaki tribe. They
are darker than the Persians. As a general rule they have straight
noses, with very fully expanded nostrils, good mouths, thin lips,
straight or slightly curved eyebrows, dark gray or black eyes, hazel
in a few instances, deeply set, and usually rather close together,
well-developed foreheads, small ears, very small feet, and small hands
with tapering fingers. The limbs below the knee are remarkably
straight and well-developed, and the walk is always good.

It is not easy to say how the women are made, as their clothing gives
no indications of form. They are long-limbed, and walk with a firm,
even, elastic stride. They are frequently tall, and except when
secluded are rarely stout. Their hands and feet are small. Their
figures are spoilt (if they ever had any) by early maternity and hard
work. At twenty a woman looks past forty. Many, perhaps it is not an
exaggeration to say most, of them have narrowly escaped being
handsome. Fine eyes, straight noses, and well-formed mouths with thin
lips are the rule. The hair is always glossy and abundant, and the
teeth of both sexes are white, regular, and healthy-looking, though
toothache is a painfully common ailment.

The women's dress in the "higher classes" is much like that worn by
the ordinary Persian women, with the exception of what I have
elsewhere called "balloon trousers," but the hard-working tribesmen's
wives are clothed in loose blue cotton trousers drawn in at the
ankles, short open chemises, and short open jackets. A black or
coloured kerchief covers the head, the ends hanging down behind or in
front. They wear loose woollen shoes with leather soles. The dress is
not pretty or picturesque, and is apt to be dirty and ragged, but it
suits their lives and their hard work.

Both sexes stain the finger-nails and the palms of the hands with
henna, and all wear amulets or charms suspended round the neck, or
bound on the upper part of the arm. These consist of passages from the
Koran, which are written on parchment in very small characters, and
are enclosed in cases of silver or leather.

At night they merely take off the outer garment where they have two.
The scanty ablutions are very curious. Each family possesses a metal
jug of rather graceful form, with a long spout curiously curved, and
the mode of washing, which points to an accustomed scarcity of water,
is to pour a little into the palm of the right hand, and bathe the
face, arms, and hands with it, soap not being used. They conclude by
rinsing the mouth and rubbing the teeth either with the forefinger or
with the aromatic leaf of a small pink salvia.

I called by appointment on the Khan's wives, sixteen in number. An
ordinary tribesman marries as many wives as he can afford to house and
keep. Poverty and monogamy are not allied here. Women do nearly all
the work, large flocks create much female employment, and as it is
"contrary to Bakhtiari custom" to employ female servants who are not
wives, polygamy is very largely practised. On questioning the guides,
who are usually very poor men, I find that they have two, three, and
even four wives, the reverse of what is customary among the peasants
of Turkey and Persia proper. The influence of a chief increases with
the number of his wives, as it enlarges his own family connections,
and those made by the marriages of his many sons and daughters. Large
families are the rule. Six children is the average in a monogamous
household, and the rate of infant mortality is very low.

The "fort" is really picturesque, though forlorn and dirty. It is
built on the steep slope of a hill, and on one side is three stories
in height. It has a long gallery in front, with fretwork above the
posts which support the roof, round towers at two of the corners, and
many irregular roofs, and steep zigzags cut in the rock lead up to
it. The centre is a quadrangle. When I reached the gateway under the
tower many women welcomed me, and led me down a darkish passage to the
gallery aforesaid, which has a pretty view of low hills, with
mulberries and pomegranates in the foreground. This gallery runs the
whole length of the fort, and good rooms open upon it. It was
furnished with rugs upon the floor, and two long wooden settees,
covered with checked native blankets in squares of Indian yellow and
madder red.

I had presents for the favourite wife, but as one man said this was
the favourite, and another that, and the hungry eyes of sixteen women
were fixed on the parcels, I took the safer course of presenting them
to the Khan for the "ladies of the _andarun_." Yahya Khan sent to know
if it would be agreeable to me for him to make his salaam to me, a
proposal which I gladly accepted as a relief from the curiosity and
disagreeable familiarity of the women. There was a complete rabble of
women in the gallery, with crawling children and screaming babies--a
forlorn, disorderly household, in which the component parts made no
secret of their hatred and jealousy of each other.

I pitied the Khan as he came in to this Babel of intriguing women and
untutored children--of women without womanliness and children without
innocence--the lord and master of the women, but not in any noble
sense their husband, nor is the house, or any polygamous house, in any
sense a home.

The wife who, I was afterwards told, is the "reigning favourite" sat
on the same settee as her lord, and he ignored the whole of them. Her
father, Bagha Khan, asked me to give into his care the present for
her, lest it should make the other wives jealous.

Yahya Khan rules a large part of the Pulawand tribe, 1000 families,
and aspires to the chieftainship of its subdivisions, among which are
the Bosakis, Hajwands, Isawands, and Hebidis, numbering 2800
families.[10]

  [Illustration: YAHYA KHAN.]

He is a tall, big, middle-aged man with a very wide mouth, and a beard
dyed auburn with henna--very intelligent, especially as regards his
own interests, and very well off, having built his castle himself.

He asked me if I thought England would occupy south-west Persia in the
present Shah's lifetime? Which has the stronger army, England or
Russia? Why England does not take Afghanistan? Did I think the
Zil-es-Sultan had any chance of succeeding his father? but several
times reverted to what seemed uppermost in his mind, the chances of a
British occupation of Southern Persia, a subject on which I was
unwilling to enter. He complained bitterly of Persian exactions, and
said that the demand made on him this year is exactly double the sum
fixed by the Amin-es-Sultan.

It is not easy to estimate the legitimate taxation. Probably it
averages two _tumans_, or nearly fifteen shillings a family. The
assessment of the tribes is fixed, but twenty, forty, and even sixty
per cent extra is often taken from them by the authorities, who in
their turn are squeezed at Tihran or Isfahan. Every cow, mule, ass,
sheep, and goat is taxed. Horses pay nothing.

In order to get away from perilous topics, which had absolutely no
interest for the women. I told him how interested I was in seeing all
his people clothed in blue Manchester cottons, though England does not
grow a tuft of cotton or a plant of indigo. I mentioned that the
number of people dependent on the cotton industry in Britain equals
the whole population of Persia, and this made such an impression on
him that he asked me to repeat it three times. He described his tribe
as prosperous, raising more wheat than it requires, and exporting 1000
_tumans'_ worth of carpets annually.

It is curious that nomadic semi-savages should not only sow and
harvest crops, and make carpets of dyed wool, as well as goats-hair
rugs and cloth, horse-furniture, _kh[=u]rjins_, and socks of intricate
patterns, but that they should understand the advantages of trade, and
export not only mules, colts, and sheep, but large quantities of
charcoal, which is carried as far as Hamadan; as well as _gaz_,
gall-nuts, tobacco, opium, rice, gum mastic, clarified butter, the
skins of the fox and a kind of marten, and cherry sticks for pipes.

Certainly the women are very industrious, rising at daylight to churn,
working all day, weaving in the intervals, and late at night boiling
the butter in their big caldrons. They make their own clothes and
those of their husbands and children, except the felt coats, sewing
with needles like skewers and very coarse loosely-twisted cotton
thread. They sew backwards, _i.e._ from left to right, and seem to use
none but a running stitch. Everywhere they have been delighted with
gifts of English needles and thread, steel thimbles, and scissors.

When it is remembered that, in addition to all the "household"
avocations which I have enumerated, they pitch and strike tents, do
much of the loading and unloading of the baggage, and attend
faithfully to their own offspring and to that of their flocks and
herds, it will be realised that the life of a Bakhtiari wife is
sufficiently laborious.

We were to have left that burning valley at 11 P.M., and when I
returned at dusk from the

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