Journeys In Persia And Kurdistan ( Vol.Ii).

syaz - Mrs. Bishop (Isabella L. Bird).

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Publié par	syaz
Publié le	11 janvier 2011
Nombre de lectures	27
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	32 Mo

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JOUENEYS PEESIA AND KUEDISTAN CHURCH MARSHALITA, OP KOCHANES. Frontispiece, vol. JOURNEYS PEESIA INCLUDING A AND SUMMER AND IN KHBBISTm THE UPPER TO THE KAEUN A VISIT REGION NESTORIAN RAYAHS BY MRS. BISHOP (ISABELLA L. BIRD) HONORARY FELLOW OF THE ROYAL SCOTTISH GEOGRAPHICALSOCIETY AUTHOROF ' SIX MONTHSIN THE SANDWICH ISLANDS' 'UNBEATEN TRACKS IN JAPAN,' ETC. IN TWO VOLUMES-VOL. II. WITHPORTRAIT, ANDILLUSTRATIONS ^APS, LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE 1891 STREET LIST OF IN ILLUSTBATION8 VOLUME II. Clmrch.of Mar Slialita, Kochanes . "StoneLion and Guide . Karun at Pul-i-Ali-Kuh Killa Bazuft Frontispiece Pacje8 Toface paye 10 19 Fording the Karun Sar-i-Cheshnieh-i-K uran g . 23 29 Zard Kuh Range . Aziz Khan 30 37 Yahya Khan . 110 A Twig Bridge 1 Tomb of Esther and Mordecal . . 114 153 Kurd of Sujbulak Hesso Khan . . 208 264 A Syrian Family Designs on Tombs at Kochanes Syrian Cross Syrian Priest and Wife A Syrian Girl . 273 To face page 297 . 297 310 . 315 Rock and Citadel of Van . Kurds of Van Kurd A Hakkiari Tofacepaye 338 , . 339 372 LETTEE XVI ALI-KUH, June Two days before we left Chigakhor fierce heat set in, with a blue heat haze. Since then the mercury has reached 9 8° 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 changeor clouds or showersuntil 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° 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 crosseda low hill into the Seligun valley, so fair and solitary a month ago, now brown and dusty, and swarming with Ilyats and their VOL. II B 2 JOURNEYS IN PERSIA LETTER xvi flocks, and Lake Albolaki has shrunk into something little better than a swamp. A path at a great elevation abovea stream and a short rocky ascentbrought us to the top of the pass above Nagliun, a wall of rock, with an altitude of 7320 feet,and a very stiff zigzagdescent upon Isfandyar Khan's garden, where the heat made a long halt necessary. The view from the NaghunPassof the great Arclal 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 greatmassof the Kuh-i-Gerra, rangeof the 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 Arclal valley by the great Tang-i-Ardal, is a grand feature of the landscapefrom 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 speciesof aristolocliia, 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 Centaurcaalata, 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, LETTER xvi TANG-I-DARKASH WARE ASH 3 and a stampedeof 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 therewas 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 baggagecould 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 secondvisit. 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 acrossthe stream at its exit from the mountains. Above the bridge are great masses of naked rock, rising into tremendous precipices above the compressedwater, 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. 4 JOURNEYS IN_PERSIA LETTER xvi Geographically tang has a greatinterest,for the this water passing under the bridge is the united volume of the -watersystem to which three out of the four districts known as the Chahar Mahals owe their fertility, and representsthe drainage of 2500 square miles. It will be remembered that we enteredthe ChaharMahals by the Kahva Eukh Pass,and crossed that portion of them lying between Kahva Eukh 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 considerableheight above it. It is occasionally much compressed betweenwalls of conglomerate, and boils alongfuriously,but evenwhereit 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 Eustam-i, where the peoplewerevery courteous put me on the road and 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 goodswith them. There was not a creature left behind who could tell me of a spring, and it was a tiresome search before 1 came,high upon the hillside, on a stream tumbling down under willows over red rock, in a maze of campanulasand 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, LETTERxvi WILD FLOWERS 5 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 largeIlyat camps above, from theseandfrom Eustam-i and the peoplehave been crowding in. The wild flowers about Ali-kuh are in great profusion just now, the most showybeinghollyhocks-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 scarcelyused except by the Ilyats. It is in fact horribly steep on the Ali-kuh side. The great Bakhtiari rangeson its south-west side, and a deepvalley below, closed by the great mass of Amin-i-lewa, are a contrast to the utterly shadeless mostly waterlessregionsof Persiaproper and whi