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Title: Twelve Days. An account of a journey across the
   Bakhtiari Mountains in South-western Persia.
Author: Sackville-West, Vita [Victoria Mary] (1892-1962)
Date of first publication: 1928
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   London: Hogarth Press, 1928
   [first edition]
Date first posted: 6 September 2014
Date last updated: 6 September 2014
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1200

This ebook was produced by Al Haines and Mark Akrigg


PUBLISHER'S NOTE

The original printed edition used as the source for this
ebook includes a four-page geographical appendix by the
author's travel companion Gladwyn Jebb (1900-1996).
We have omitted this appendix for copyright reasons.

Italics in the original printed edition are indicated _thus_.






  _TWELVE DAYS_

  _An account of a journey across the Bakhtiari Mountains
  in South-western Persia_

  _V. Sackville-West_

  _Author of "Seducers in Ecuador", "The Land",
  "Passenger to Teheran", etc._



  _Published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the
  Hogarth Press, 52 Tavistock Square, London, W.C.
  1928_




_Printed in Great Britain by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_.




TO

HAROLD NICOLSON

"Grant me however this one favour: permit me to take a holiday, like
one of these men of indolent minds, who are wont to feast themselves on
their own thoughts whenever they travel alone.  Such persons, you know,
before they have found out any means of effecting their wishes, pass
that by, to avoid the fatigue of thinking whether such wishes are
practicable or not, and assume that what they desire is already
theirs." PLATO'S _Republic_.




  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


  1. Yezd-i-Khast
  2. Between Isfahan and Shalamzar
  3. The Karoun at Do-Pulan
  4. Bridge over the Karoun
  5. The Barren Murdeh Pass
  6. Ruined Caravanserai at Shalil
  7. Dawn at Shalil
  8. On the Murvarid Pass
  9. Near the Top of the Pass
  10. Deh Diz
  11. A Wandering Dervish, Deh Diz
  12. Women fetching Water from the Spring, Deh Diz
  13. Ploughing under Difficulties
  14. The Karoun at Pul-i-Godar
  15. Above the Karoun
  16. On the Road
  17. Bakhtiari Country
  18. Near Cheshmeh Khatoun
  19. Near Cheshmeh Khatoun
  20. The Plain of Malamir
  21. The Main Street, Malamir
  22. On the Plain of Malamir
  23. First Sight of the Oil-fields
  24. Nomad Tents on the Plain of Gurghir
  *25. Bakhtiari crossing the Karoun
  *26. A Goat-skin Raft, Reversed
  *27. A General View of the Oil-fields
  *28. The Karoun at Godar Landar
  *29. The Pipe Line crossing the Imam Reza
  *30. Looking towards Arabistan
  31. Persepolis: the Terrace
  32. Palmyra


_For the photographs marked with an asterisk, I am indebted to the
courtesy of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company._  V. S.-W.




I

For a long time I believed that it would be impossible to make a book
out of these experiences; I could see no shape in them, no pleasing
curve; nothing but a series of anti-climaxes, and too much repetition
of what I had done, and written down, before.  Yet I was loath to let
the whole thing go unrecorded.  Was it for this that I had gone
footsore, cold, hot, wet, hungry? climbed up, and scrambled down?
covered all those miles? looked at all those goats?  Surely not.  There
must be a possible book in it somewhere.  The book was always in my
mind, teasing at me, and little by little, as time receded, it began to
take shape, a meaning began to rise up out of the welter, a few
definite conclusions which really had some bearing on half-formulated
ideas; besides, the fingers which have once grown accustomed to a pen
soon itch to hold one again: it is necessary to write, if the days are
not to slip emptily by.  How else, indeed, to clap the net over the
butterfly of the moment? for the moment passes, it is forgotten; the
mood is gone; life itself is gone.  That is where the writer scores
over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop.
Growth is exciting; growth is dynamic and alarming.  Growth of the
soul, growth of the mind; how the observation of last year seems
childish, superficial; how this year,--even this week,--even with this
new phrase,--it seems to us that we have grown to a new maturity.  It
may be a fallacious persuasion, but at least it is stimulating, and so
long as it persists, one does not stagnate.

I look back as through a telescope, and see, in the little bright
circle of the glass, moving flocks and ruined cities.




II

There they are, a long way off, and looking at the map of Asia, a kind
of awe comes over me that I should be able to visualise the place
represented by a name in cold black print.  I know how vast are the
spaces which on the map cover one inch.  I know how high and arduous
are the mountains which on the map deepen only into a stronger shade of
brown.  I think of life going on there, the same to-day as when I, so
briefly, brushed past it.  The nomads are on the move; their black
tents dot the plain; the fierce dogs rush out barking, as a wild figure
on horseback gallops up and flings himself from the saddle.  At night
the black tents cower between red fires.  It is exactly the same for
them this year as last, and the days which stand out so vividly for me
were for them merely the uncalendared days of ordinary existence.
Malamir to-day scorches in the sun.  Do-Pulan sleeps in the shadow of
the hill by the banks of the Karoun.  In the dripping gorge below
Gandom Kar the Crown Imperials rear their brilliant orange among the
rocks.

The Bakhtiari country.  "Bakhtiari", says the _Encyclopdia
Britannica_, "one of the great nomad tribes of Persia."  It goes on to
mention the Haft-lang and the Chahar-lang as the two main divisions of
the tribe; it records a stormy and blood-stained history.  "Here," says
Lord Curzon, "in a _mise en scne_ which unites all the elements of
natural grandeur,--snowy crags, rugged hills, mountain ravines,--are
the _yelaks_ or summer quarters of the tribes."  Alas, how bleak and
brief is the written word.

One of the great nomad tribes of Persia, the Bakhtiari are Lurs, but
who the Lurs are and whence they came, as Lord Curzon says, is one of
the unsolved riddles of history.  "A people without a history, a
literature, or even a tradition," he says, "presents a phenomenon in
face of which science stands abashed.  Are they Turks?  Are they
Persians?  Are they Semites?  All three hypotheses have been urged.
They appear to belong to the same ethnical group as the Kurds, their
neighbours on the north; nor does their language, which is a dialect of
Persian, differ materially from the Kurdish tongue.  On the other hand,
they consider it an insult to be confounded with the Kurds, whom they
call Leks; and the majority of writers have agreed in regarding them as
the veritable relics of the old Aryan or Iranian stock, who preceded
Arabs, Turks, and Tartars in the land.  Whilst, however, we may accept
this as the most probable hypothesis, and may even be led thereby to
regard with heightened interest these last survivals of an illustrious
stock, we are not compelled to endorse the conjectural connection of
Bakhtiari with Bactria, which has been propounded by some writers, or
to localise their ancestral home.  (Some have gone so far as to base on
this resemblance the assertion that the Bakhtiari are the relics of one
of the Greek colonies left by Alexander in Asia, an hypothesis for
which the further support is claimed of a similarity in the Greek and
Bakhtiari national dances.)  It is sufficient to believe that they are
Aryans by descent, and to know that they have lived for centuries in
their present mountains."  Rawlinson, who travelled among the
Bakhtiari, characterised them as "the most wild and barbarous of all
the inhabitants of Persia"; but we, making plans for our expedition,
were less interested in the history and nature of the tribe than in the
road which we should have to travel.

We had spent many an evening in Teheran, poring over maps and
discussing our journey across the Bakhtiari country.  It had not been
easy to get information; the maps were most inadequate; there seemed to
be no books in Teheran available on the subject of more recent date
than Sir Henry Layard's, which related an expedition undertaken in
1840, nor were there any Europeans in Teheran who had travelled over
the Bakhtiari Road.  We had to rely on a few letters, none of which
were very reassuring.  A young officer in the Indian Army wrote that he
had never been so exhausted in his life, and other accounts spoke of
precipices and crazy bridges, and swirling rivers to ford,--all of
which, save for the wail about exhaustion, proved to be completely
misleading.  Travellers like to exaggerate the perils they have run;
so, not to fall into the common error, I say at the outset that never
at any moment were our brittle limbs in the slightest danger.  The
Bakhtiari Road, certainly, is not for those who like a country stroll;
but it may be undertaken by the most cowardly if they are but
sufficiently active.  Indeed, the only intrepidity which we displayed
was our determination to go despite the romantic discouragement which
we received.

The Bakhtiari Khans living in Teheran gave a different account of their
own country.  Either they were loath to acknowledge that their famous
Road was not made of asphalt, or else in the amiable mendacious way of
the East they wished to flatter our ears with pleasant hearing; I
remember that on asking one of them if it was possible to ride over the
Road, or if one must go on foot, I obtained the startling reply, "Ride?
but you can go in a motor!"  Now this was not true.  It was indeed
magnificently untrue: it was a lie on the grand scale.  By courtesy it
is known as the Bakhtiari Road, but actually it is a trail, a track,
which leads, now up, now down, over wild and mountainous country; and
as for wheeled traffic, no one could push even a wheelbarrow over it.
My neighbour at dinner must have known how soon and how thoroughly his
words would be disproved; but after the manner of his race he no doubt
thought it more agreeable to produce a comfortable impression at the
moment, leaving the future to take care of itself.  Familiar with the
Persian habit, I forbore from argument.  Sitting there at dinner in the
sumptuous house of the rich Khans, the Road seemed remote enough; a
large faade of civilisation seemed to have been erected, a faade
built up out of the French language, poker and poker chips, and the
innovation by which the Persians laid aside their _kolahs_ after
dinner; but behind it rose the mountains which turned all this
sophistication to a sham.  The Salon pictures of 1880, the candelabra,
the ormolu, even the acetylene lamps on the table--giving a glaring
white light and known frequently to explode--could not wholly eliminate
the sense of a certain primitive, feudal organisation in the
background,--the source of wealth, the domain and territory where our
suave hosts abandoned their pretences, and went back to the brutalities
they had known as little boys.  Those carpets hanging on the walls,
those amorini, that representation of Omar accepting a draught of wine
from the cup-bearer--those had been woven by women of the tribes,
rocking a cradle with one hand while with the other they threaded the
swift shuttle.  Soft and polite, our hosts had, elsewhere, a complete,
separate existence.  They had no intention of talking about it.  Of
course not.  The Road?  The Bakhtiari Road?  Why, you can go by motor.
Who among us betrays his family secrets to a stranger?  All is for the
best; and we talk least about what we know most intimately.  In fact,
the more glibly a man talks, the more you may mistrust his knowledge.
Complete, detailed intimacy begets reticence.  The mountains rise in
the background, willy-nilly; but they are blocked out by the
poker-chips; it is the faade which we all put up.

Little by little, our expedition began to take shape.  The dates were
settled and a letter despatched to Isfahan ordering tents and mules.
Our Bakhtiari friends in Teheran promised us an escort.  (An escort?
Here was a hint, surely, that the Road was not quite the Route
Nationale they would have us believe?)  We dragged out our camp
equipment, and sorted it on the landing at the top of the stairs: two
beds, two sleeping-bags, a Rawkee chair, a folding table, a green
canvas bucket, two felt-covered water-bottles, a blue tin basin.  My
camera.  My films, in tin cylinders.  An amphora full of apricot jam.
So much, and no more, would Harold Nicolson and I provide.  Our dogs
nosed round uneasily, scenting departure.  Meanwhile, the caravan
increased: to Harold Nicolson, Gladwyn Jebb, and myself, the original
three, were added Copley Amory from the American Legation in Teheran,
and Lionel Smith, who by letter announced his intention of coming up
from Baghdad to join us; so that altogether we were five Europeans
setting out on the Bakhtiari Road.




III

The new moon rose in a cloudless sky at Isfahan on the evening before
we set out.  We sat in the garden watching Venus and the slip of moon
travel together between two tall poplars, in a silence broken only by
the croaking of frogs and the distant cries coming from the town.
Harold Nicolson and I had just returned from Shiraz, the others had
come down from Teheran, bringing our fortnightly post with them.
Harold Nicolson was in a dejected frame of mind, for in the post-bag he
had received the proofs of _Some People_, and I was only just in time
to stop him from sending Messrs. Constable a cable to cancel
publication.  "It's too feeble," he said, standing with the telegram
ready written out in his hand, "I can't possibly let it appear."  Very
grudgingly he gave me the second set of proofs to read.  "You take the
responsibility then," he said when a few hours later I met him with
expostulations; "I wash my hands of the thing."  I said I would take
the responsibility.


So we sat rather sulkily in the garden watching Venus and the new moon.
The month was April, the evening air warm and milky.  It had been
raining; the smell of the wet earth came up to us as it so often does
in England, but so rarely in Persia.  Little gold and purple irises
grew all along the path, on the edges of the irrigation stream.  The
gardener had told me that the bulbs came from Gandom Kar, on the
Bakhtiari Road, and I had made a resolution to find them there; but it
was not of the Bakhtiari Road that I was now thinking.  My thoughts
were washing lazily round in a sea of impressions; coming up to the
surface in a series of little pictures.  Nearly a thousand miles of
motoring had given me plenty of pretext for idle dreaming.  We had
passed through Isfahan only a short while ago, and now were returned
there; but I for one did not feel myself to be quite the same person: I
felt that something had been added to me--something which I could never
quite communicate to anybody else; an enrichment.  It was as though my
eyes could see a new colour which nobody else could see.  My
companions, doubtless, saw a new colour too; but it could not be
precisely the same colour as mine: _that_ was a personal possession,
incommunicable (alas and thank God) in words.

Those floating pictures.  Would they fade with time?

An absurd picture started the series: ourselves in the market-place of
a brown mud village, the ground strewn with our intimate possessions,
hair-brushes, sponges, pyjamas, while two religious processions passed
by, howling at the top of their voices, but neglected by the villagers,
who preferred (small blame to them) to watch us.  Our luggage car, a
Ford, had broken down some fifteen miles back, and after pushing it for
those fifteen miles with the nose of the other car, we had decided to
abandon it in the village and pack the essentials of our luggage on to
our beautiful brand-new Dodge.  A ludicrous spectacle we must have
presented, bending over our _disjecta membra_ in the market-place at
Kumisheh in Persia.

Then floated up into my mind a vision of brown villages, a whole string
of villages, up a wide valley, perhaps a mile from the track over which
we travelled; brown villages among poplars, with blue domes of little
mosques, and round pigeon-towers, and blossom, blossom, blossom.
Blossom frothing over the walls, pink blossom, white blossom, like
gauze, like a light cloud tossed up into the air to remain caught among
the poplars and the blue domes.  The villages followed the course of a
stream, a long belt of fruitfulness; alas that we had no time to strike
across the valley and enter them.  They remained nameless for me,
nameless and seen only from afar, in their cloud of ethereal unreality.

Then we had come to Yezd-i-Khast, that fantastic grey eyrie overhanging
a chasm.  Pierre Loti compared it to the abode of sea birds; Gobineau,
to a bee-hive.  On one side it is flush with the plain, but on the
other it rises sheer up from a dry river-bed, a skeleton-coloured cliff
of a town, pierced with windows like the eye-sockets of a skull, and
beetling with wooden balconies and platforms that threaten to fall at
any moment into the canyon below.  It is difficult to see where the
natural rock ends and the houses begin.  The whole structure seems to
be hooked and hitched together, in defiance, as Pierre Loti rightly
said, of all the laws of equilibrium and common sense; rickety,
ramshackle, crazy, yet of untraceable antiquity.  No architect hitched
it there; it grew, as though the rock had sprouted upward, as though
the original rock-dwellings had produced and transformed themselves
into the semblance of sun-baked hovels.  An air of uncompromising
violence hangs about it.  Its inhabitants must surely differ from other
men.  In the heart of this strange structure lurks a mosque, split from
roof to floor by earthquake.  Why did the earthquake not precipitate
the whole folly into the ravine?  Like an old ship, whose timbers creak
and complain, it probably enjoys unlimited flexibility.  But it was not
without misgiving that we ascended to one of those upper rooms.

[Illustration: YEZD-I-KHAST]

Few travellers spend the night at Yezd-i-Khast.  They usually push on
to Abadeh, where there is a telegraph-house, and the telegraph-clerk
and his wife to look after them.  We, however, delayed by the
misadventure with the Ford, came to Yezd-i-Khast at sunset and
preferred to share our bed with the chickens than to cross the barren
plains after nightfall in a solitary motor.  If one is benighted in
Persia one makes the best of it; but no reasonable traveller exposes
himself and his belongings if he can help it.  He is not necessarily a
coward, but he remembers that story of the missionary on the Bushire
road who was left with nothing but a tail-coat--which he wore back to
front--in which to make his entry into Bushire.  We asked if we could
have a room in Yezd-i-Khast.  The whole population had of course
gathered round us, gazing greedily, but they were kept in check by an
authoritative person in a green robe, the colour of an unripe lemon,
who appeared to be the headman of the village and, as such, entitled to
whatever profit the foreigners were likely to bring.  We could, most
certainly we could, have a room.  Stiff, cramped--for we were five,
plus luggage, in the motor now that the overflow of the Ford had been
squashed into and on to the Dodge,--we followed our host through the
throng of villagers.  I was, and I say it with apologetic shame, the
least cramped of the five, for it was I who drove the motor, and so
could neither be asked to prop my legs up on petrol tins, nor to
balance a suitcase on my knees.  On the other hand, I had to keep a
sharp look-out for what the French so elegantly call _les ingalits du
terrain_,--no light matter in Persia, where an apparently perfect
stretch of desert track is apt to be broken by a ditch crossing the
road, invisible until you are right on it, or where the going is so bad
that for twenty miles at a stretch the speedometer twitches round the
mark at five miles an hour.  Nevertheless, I think I had the best of
it.  Stiff, cramped, therefore, we followed our host into the labyrinth
of his house.  Like all Persian houses, it was lavishly populated.
Women, children, chickens, dogs, goats, donkeys, meandered at their
ease through vague enclosures which might have been rooms or might have
been stables, the floor made of earth, straw, and dung, the walls of
the usual sun-dried mud.  The women peeped and tittered as we passed; a
very old woman tried to bribe us before she would unbar a door, but our
host swept her aside in his lordly way.  It was dark, and some
crouching women were cooking over a red fire in a corner.  We ascended
by a flight of open steps to the roof level.  Over the distant
mountains the last bars of sunset slashed the sky with blood.  The
plain beneath was black as a dark sea.  A faint music of camel bells
rose up to us.  This was our roof; our private belvedere in
Yezd-i-Khast.

The room into which our host proudly showed us was tiny; a little mud
cell; in actual measurements it could not have exceeded eight feet
square.  It had an opening looking towards the east, a casement without
glass, but closed by a wooden shutter; and a door barred by a wooden
bolt of such ingenuity that, having locked ourselves in for the night,
it took all our wits to let ourselves out again in the morning.  An
arrangement of bolt, socket, and groove scooped in the clay wall; to
this day I have no idea how it worked.  There we were, in Yezd-i-Khast,
dangled over a deep ravine, with a cut-throat villain for a host--for
all we knew--and only just enough room to lay ourselves down for the
night.

Down in the village street stood our motor, the ceiling light switched
on, brilliantly illuminating the interior, and inside it, oblivious to
the crowd that pressed against the windows, reclined our English
mechanic (he who had driven the Ford until its collapse), reading
Gibbon.

We were aroused in the morning by a knocking on the door and the voice
of our host: "The dawn has come," he said, "and the sun is rising."  So
noble and high-sounding a summons brought us to our feet.  Scrambling
out of our sleeping-bags, in the cramped disorder of the little room,
we unbarred the wooden shutter and looked out towards the east.  Below
us the ravine lay, still in shadow, rising on the opposite side to the
level of the plain.  The plain stretched away, dark and wide, to a
range of jagged hills across the horizon.  The sun had not yet
appeared, but the whole east was lambent with his near presence; the
hills stood up, sombre shapes, against a saffron heaven bruised and
streaked with narrow purple clouds, protean.  The camel caravan was
just going out; we could see the long swaying string, and hear the
grave, deep note of their bells.  The dawn, the space, the
caravan--this, this was the immemorial beauty of Persia, framed for us
in the square opening, cut so high up in the cliff-like wall of
Yezd-i-Khast; but such moments cannot be held arrested.  Imperceptibly
the sky was growing more luminous; everything was lulled but the bells;
the very silence in which the colours of the sky changed, spread, and
became molten, seemed to prophesy some imminent and tremendous event,
some royal coming, which should be accomplished only in the hush of a
waiting world.  He came, tipping the hills with gold, sending a long
wave of light rolling over the plain; at first only a rim creeping up
above the peaks, but irradiating the whole sky as with a sudden burst
of trumpets; then the entire resplendent disc climbing with
unbelievable rapidity: the chariot and the horses of the sun.

Sitting in the garden at Isfahan I lived again through the dawn of
Yezd-i-Khast with such intensity, that I really believed myself to be
there.  Coming back with a start, I drifted off again, and stood at the
Koran Gate above Shiraz, looking down on the mosques and cypresses of
the city which lay in a haze of smoke and sunset.  So that was Shiraz
"which turns aside the heart of the wanderer from his native land"; a
long-dreamed-of pilgrimage, at last I had achieved it.  That was Shiraz
of which Herbert had said with more picturesqueness than accuracy,
"Here art magick was first hatched; here Nimrod for some time lived;
here Cyrus, the most excellent of heathen princes, was born, and here
(all but his head, which was sent to Pisigard) entombed.  Here the
great Macedonian glutted his avarice and Bacchism.  Here the first
Sibylla sung of our Saviour's incarnation.  Here the Magi are thought
to have set out towards Bethlehem, and here a series of two hundred
kings swayed their sceptres."  But it was the soft Persia of the poets;
the Persia of gardens, lutes, and nightingales; not the austere Persia
of mountain and desert that I so loved.  "The black-eyed beauties of
Kashmir and the Turks of Samarcand," said Hafiz, "sing and dance to the
strains of Hafiz of Shiraz"; and even more engagingly, "when thou
passest by our tomb, seek a blessing, for it shall become a place of
pilgrimage for the libertines of all the world."  Maybe.  But what I
remembered of Shiraz was an old man sitting in the bazaars, carding a
heap of snow-white wool; a shaft of light fell on him; the string of
his implement twanged incessantly; needing not to watch his work, he
looked at us with indifferent inscrutable eyes, so identified with his
craft that it seemed the only thing which kept him here on earth.




IV

It is now possible, according to Persian standards, to motor from
Isfahan to Shalamzar, which lies at the foot of the Bakhtiari
mountains, a distance of little over a hundred miles; a matter of eight
or nine hours by motor, but several days' journeying by caravan.  We
were wise enough to send our caravan on in advance, and to avail
ourselves of a Ford car and the abominable track across the desert.
The Ford made up in garishness for what it lacked in reliability, being
gaily decorated with bunches of yellow and magenta flowers made of dyed
feathers, stuck into the hood and windscreen.  Lurching from village to
village, delayed by many a puncture, we spent a day on that part of the
journey, before the road became impracticable even for a motor on
caterpillar wheels.  Two roads I knew already, leading out of Isfahan
to north and south, the Teheran road and the Shiraz road; but this road
to Shalamzar, which indeed was scarcely a road at all, was new to me.
It rambled through the country in an intimate way; it could not in any
sense be regarded as a main road.  The Teheran-Shiraz road was
unfrequented enough to satisfy most tastes, but still it was a main
road crossing Persia, and as such was not sufficiently remote to
satisfy my geographical romanticism.  I know, somewhere in my heart,
that I want to be where no white man has ever been before, far from any
place that has ever been heard of.  The globe is too small and too well
mapped, and the cinema too active.

Our way took us at first through country which was, for Persia,
surprisingly well worked and populous.  Everywhere the peasants were
ploughing between the foot-hills, and a string of villages accompanied
us, brown in the midst of their green willows and poplars.  A
characteristic feature of these villages was the pigeon-tower, round
and crenellated, and splashed white with the ordure of the innumerable
pigeons; the storks were nesting too, and their large untidy nests
straddled perilously on the roofs and at the angles of mud-walls.  We
stopped for luncheon in the village of Mubaraq, spreading our rugs on
the floor of a carpenter's shop in a large barn-like building, among
the litter of carpenter's tools and half-made wooden ploughs, the clean
smell of fresh-cut wood mingling with the scent of the fruit-blossom
that floated in through an open door.  The carpenter, a dignified man
with his beard dyed a bright orange, had been cutting out, we noted,
wooden rosettes exactly similar in design to those carved in stone on
the lintels of Persepolis.  We had set a servant to ensure our privacy
from the curiosity of the villagers, but looking through that open door
on to the little walled-in garden we saw that we were not unobserved,
for three women, in their black draperies, like the Three Fates, had
climbed on to the housetop and were peeping at us from behind their
veils.  We could not grudge them their entertainment, for it was surely
not every day that Europeans passed through Mubaraq; and indeed those
three black figures on the housetop, against the sky, made a group
which we were as pleased to contemplate as they were pleased to
contemplate us.  We would have been glad to linger in the carpenter's
shop, but as we could not tell what delays might be before us in the
shape of broken springs or burst tyres, we reluctantly set off again
for Shalamzar.

Very soon we had left the villages and the agriculture behind, and were
on the desolate uplands where the only sign of human life was an
occasional shepherd, a solitary figure leaning on a long stick while
his flock strayed and browsed.  These plains would in the summer months
be covered with the flocks of the Bakhtiari, but the Bakhtiari had not
yet arrived; they were on their way, as we knew, coming up the Road
down which we were to travel; they were concentrating on the far-off,
unknown plain of Malamir in the south, and we should meet them flowing
up, in an endless narrow stream, to these higher, cooler plains of
Chahar Mahal.  Our frequent punctures,--for the stones were sharp--gave
us an opportunity for walking about and enjoying the freedom of these
high, airy spaces at our leisure.  The love of Persia filled my heart
again, at the sight of her high solitudes in the purity of the April
day.  I rejoiced, as always, in this empty, unfurnished landscape,
where the imagination had room to move about, without stumbling over a
multitude of objects, beautiful perhaps, but ready-made.

[Illustration: BETWEEN ISFAHAN AND SHALAMZAR]

At Shalamzar we were to be the guests of Morteza Khuli Khan Bakhtiari,
the son of Samsam-es-Saltaneh, but as he himself was away in Teheran we
were received with great ceremony by his steward.  Shalamzar proved to
be a large country-house in a valley, standing in an oasis of poplar
trees, whose young green, very delicate against the snow mountains,
gave us a promise of the coming spring.  The courtyard was full of
movement, for our caravan had arrived--fourteen strong mules with three
or four muleteers, plus our escort of three guards,--and for the first
time we heard that tinkle of mule bells which was to become so familiar
a sound in our ears.  Most of the house was shut up in the absence of
the owner, but our own camp furniture had been set up in the
ground-floor rooms.  Presently the steward came to ask if we would not
like to go up to the roof.  We followed him up to the roof, and stood
there looking at the great barrier of mountains flushing pink in the
sunset, the track that we must follow being just discernible as it
zigzagged up the mountain-side to the summit.

The women of the establishment were weaving in their own quarters.  We
went to visit them, for the Bakhtiari women have no objection to being
seen unveiled.  I was sorry that they no longer wore the old Bakhtiari
dress which Layard describes--the loose trousers, the white shirt open
to the waist, leaving the breast bare, the velvet jacket embroidered
with gold, the chin-straps composed of gold coins that jangle like
harness.  I had seen Bakhtiari women in Teheran, wearing the old
dresses, but I knew that they had put them on for my special benefit,
and that they no longer formed part of everyday life.  These women at
Shalamzar were copying an old Bakhtiari silk carpet, the most beautiful
carpet I had seen anywhere in the whole of Persia.  It was as complete
within itself as a lyric poem,--perfect in design and colour; they
pulled it out of its corner to display it to us, and, a real work of
art, a real unity, it sprang to our eyes in its perfection out of the
squalor of the women's room, amongst the looms and cradles and rags, a
perfect thing, in the satisfying limitation of its rectangular shape.




V

The time was at hand for us to make a closer acquaintance with our
caravan, which on the following morning we found drawn up in the
courtyard, jingling, tossing, and loaded, ready to start.  Apart from
the pack-mules, there were the saddle-mules for us to ride, large
raw-boned animals whose sensitive ears I regarded with mistrust.  We
had three servants between us: Sultan Ali, who was to act as our cook;
Rahim, who was to prove the one unfortunate member of the party; and
Bagh'er, who belonged to Harold Nicolson, and whose name, unless very
carefully pronounced, had been apt to arouse horror and dismay among
members of the British colony in Teheran.  Besides these, we had three
guards: old Hossein, whose chirpings of encouragement behind my mule
drove me nearly to distraction; a man on foot, whose name we never
discovered; and Taha, who alone came up to our ideas of what a
Bakhtiari guard should look like.  Taha was dark and spare, on his feet
he wore a pair of patent-leather boots, he was dressed in a long black
coat with silver buttons, he rode a slim, wild-looking pony, and he
carried a rifle slung across his shoulders.  This rifle, as we
presently discovered, was more for ornament than for use, since the
trigger had jammed and no amount of danger could have induced it to
fire.  It was, moreover, repaired on the stock--or perhaps decorated,
rather than repaired--with a shining tin plate, of which Taha was
evidently proud, but which bore, to our amusement, the words "Keating's
Powder".  Keating's Powder, not gunpowder; that was the pathos of
Taha's rifle.

Our escort not inspiring us with much confidence, our trust reposed in
a letter from the Khans in Teheran, threatening vengeance on the whole
Bakhtiari people, should any harm befall us.  This letter, which was
brought to us at Shalamzar by Mirza Khan, Governor of Deh Kurd and
representative of the Persian Government in the Chahar Mahal, concluded
with the words: "If you do not show every courtesy and grant every
facility to the above-mentioned noble persons, it will be extremely bad
for you".

The morning was grey and stormy, and the hospitable steward seemed
reluctant to let us go, for he assured us that we should be "blown off
the top", but we took our leave of him nevertheless, and with our long
poles in our hands, like pilgrims, set off across the valley, followed
by our caravan trailing out behind us, the bells jingling, on this
light-hearted expedition which was to take us down the Bakhtiari Road.
Very soon we got our first taste of climbing; for we rose from the
valley and were on our way up the Zirreh Pass.  Two hours of stiff
climbing lifted us to an altitude of 10,000 feet, and as we paused for
rest at the top, lashed and cut by an icy wind that met us like a demon
on the crest, we saw for the first time the wild, tumbled Bakhtiari
country lying below us and rising again in new ranges as far as the eye
could reach.  The climb had been severe, but the sense of conquest was
exhilarating.  Looking back, we took our farewell of Shalamzar far
below, and leaving the saddle-back of the _col_, plunged down the steep
path among the boulders to the further valley.

Still we could not feel that we were really embarked, for at Naghan,
our first stopping place, we were again the guests of the Khans in an
empty house, and as yet we had neither seen our tents nor unloaded our
camp-kitchen.  By our muscles, however, we were made aware that the
first stage of our journey lay behind us, and not before.  How they
ached!  It was not so much the actual miles that we had in our legs, as
the steepness and roughness of the going.  I speak for myself, for the
others were in better training; but I foolishly had set out on feet
softened by life in Teheran, and not only were my muscles, at the end
of that first day, aching so that every step was pain, and weak as
stretched elastic, but my heels were blistered and my toes bruised; let
whoever knows the discomfort of walking along an ordinary country road
with a blistered heel, try scrambling down a long mountain-side over
sharp stones, and then say what he thinks about it.  But there was no
turning back; I reflected with dismay that days and days of tramping
lay before me, not being then in a fit state of mind to realise that
sooner or later muscles would harden and feet become inured.




VI

I think the next stage, from Naghan to Do-Pulan, was the most miserable
of all.  I really shrink from recalling it.  The start was not so bad;
we walked along an easy valley, cheered by the sight of the brilliant
blue and orange bee-eaters who were flying up in scores from the south,
and for some time we sat very happily by the waters of the
Ab-i-Sabz-i-Kuh, waiting to be overtaken by the caravan, which, as it
turned out, had forded the river lower down and gone another way.
Those were the enjoyable moments, when we felt ourselves to be free in
the wilds of Persia, and could rest and talk, or look idly round for
flowers.  When we realised that the caravan had eluded us, we rose to
our feet again and walked up the long but gradual pass, which, at the
top, pitched down suddenly into a wooded hillside track even more sheer
than the drop after the Zirreh.  There was only one encouraging sign
ahead, and that was the roofs of the village of Do-Pulan (Two Bridges)
lying half hidden in the trees at the very bottom of the hill, some
three thousand feet below.  They looked a long way off; but there they
were, and there our camp would be, with food to eat and a bed to sleep
on.  I freely confess that it was with tears in my eyes--for I really
was suffering considerable pain--and in a shocking temper that I
slipped and slithered down that purgatory of a path to Do-Pulan.  But
what a blow awaited us at the bottom!  The camp was nowhere in sight,
and on making enquiries of the villagers we learnt that the caravan had
gone on to a place beyond the bridge.  What cared we that now for the
first time we saw the green waters of the great Karoun, foaming, a mere
mountain stream near the place of its birth, through a narrow gorge of
black rock?  All we cared about was that we must drag ourselves another
two miles to reach our now visible tents.  Another two miles, when we
had felt that another two steps were an impossibility.  Could we but
have leapt the river, we should have reached the camp in a few hundred
yards, but the bridge was some way down-stream, and we must double
back, after crossing it, on our tracks.  Those two miles were the
longest I ever knew.  The bridge, when we came to it, was a crazy
affair, put together with a lot of poles, like a drawing by Heath
Robinson, spanning the jade-green water between the glistening black
rocks.  I had just enough energy left to take a photograph.  As we
stumbled into camp, I found a further reserve of energy.  "Why on
earth," I said to Copley Amory, who had ridden on ahead with the
caravan, "didn't you make them pitch the tents by the village instead
of coming all this way?"  The accusation was unjust, and I knew it:
Copley Amory could speak no word of Persian, and the muleteers, even
when addressed in their own language, were as obstinate as their own
mules; but I was tired and more than footsore.  Copley Amory, being
gentle and full of perception by nature, made no retort.  He simply
spread out a rug for me on the ground.  Within five minutes we were all
asleep.

[Illustration: THE KAROUN AT DO-PULAN]

We awoke sufficiently restored to turn a still rather indifferent
glance on the beauties of nature.  Our tents were pitched in an
orchard,--on young wheat, as we now observed;--beyond the river huddled
the brown village, overhung by the high, wooded hill.  Our eyes had
adapted themselves so quickly to the mountainous landscape that we
should have been surprised to see a flat expanse.  We already took it
for granted that the world went up and down.  But we were not allowed
much time to admire our surroundings, for the local _ked-khoda_
(headman) arrived, supported by two or three friends, to demand
compensation for the damage we were doing to the wheat.  Had we paid
the sum he asked for, we should have given enough to feed the whole of
Do-Pulan throughout the year.  The Persians are a good-humoured people,
however, and a compromise was soon arrived at.  Moreover, the letter
which Mirza Khan had given us at Shalamzar went a long way towards
pacifying the _ked-khoda's_ feelings.  This difficulty arranged, we
turned once more to our peaceful contemplation and to the ordering of
our canvas-sheltered life.

[Illustration: BRIDGE OVER THE KAROUN]

Those who have never dwelt in tents have no idea either of the charm or
of the discomfort of a nomadic existence.  The charm is purely
romantic, and consequently very soon proves to be fallacious.  You
imagine that you are independent, and can stop the mule by a hiss or an
ejaculation in any spot that takes your fancy, but you will soon find
that a number of considerations come into play: water, for instance, is
more important than you had ever conceived it to be in a country where
"company's water" is carried in a convenient pipe-line to most
villages.  Lose yourself in the mountains of Asia, however, and you
will find that a spring or a stream is a more urgent necessity than
ideal scenery.  Fuel, too: the nights are cold, and the blaze of a fire
is a luxury not to be despised.  A day or two will suffice to bring you
down to the level of the practical.  Then as for the discomfort of
tents,--a chapter might be written on that subject.  In civilised life,
we take tables for granted,--tables, flat surfaces on which one may put
things down.  But in tent life there are no tables.  We, journeying
down the Bakhtiari Road, had one table, our dinner table, a rickety
collapsible thing, on which plates and glasses were precariously
balanced; a communal thing, everybody's property.  In the tents, those
private and personal retreats, there was no room for such luxuries.  If
you wanted to set anything down, even for a moment, and if it was not a
thing which could be hitched to a nail driven into the tent-pole, it
must be set down on the bed or on the ground.  The bed was the thing
you wanted to get into with the least possible delay, and were
therefore reluctant to clutter up with heavy or angular objects; the
ground was usually wet and muddy; besides, in the Bakhtiari country it
was not advisable to put things on the ground, since pilfering hands
were liable to steal under the tent flaps during the night in search of
whatever they might find.  Rawlinson records the Bakhtiari as being
most dexterous and notorious thieves, and relates the theft of a horse,
"out of a stable in an inner court, which was particularly watched, and
padlocked, moreover, with a chain for security, that unless I had
witnessed I could not possibly have believed".  This meant that
clothes, cameras and luggage must be piled in the centre of the tent,
out of reach, taking their chance of the damp.  Nothing could be left
outside, for the same reason.  Saddles, water-bottles, guns,
stores,--all were pitched recklessly into our tents in the last
desperate effort to get to bed and obtain what sleep we could before
the all-too early dawn came with its signal that we must be stirring.
Nothing could have bred a greater familiarity, a greater loathing, or a
greater affection for our few essential possessions.  We learnt a lot:
we learnt how many things may be discarded; a few days more, and we
should certainly have been sleeping in our clothes.

Barbara, however, was always unpacked.  Barbara saw more of the
Bakhtiari country, in the end, than did our sponges.  Barbara was in
the happy position of being inevitably unpacked, since she travelled
rolled up in my sleeping-bag, and that was a thing I could never have
dispensed with.  To get at it Barbara had to come out.  Barbara stood
every night on the ground against my tent-pole, leaning her wooden
cheek on her wooden hand as though she suffered from perennial
toothache.  Much-travelled Barbara! no Spanish saint, surely, was ever
taken into places so far removed from the original altar.  Harold
Nicolson had bought her for a few pesetas in Madrid, and from that
moment until the present day, when she has travelled to Berlin,
described in the Army and Navy Stores' packer's list as "figure of
lady, worm-eaten", she has never known rest.  The period of the war was
spent by Barbara in a cellar in Constantinople.  After a few years of
respite at home she travelled out to Persia in my hold-all, seeing
Egypt on the way, Delhi and Baghdad.  In Teheran she knew the proudest
moment of her life, when a Persian dealer caught sight of her on my
writing-table, lost his head, and offered me two thousand tomans for
her.  Two thousand tomans! five hundred pounds! for Barbara whose
marketable value in London might be thirty shillings at the outside.
He was accustomed to disinterred amphorae of the period of Darius, but
a mediaeval Spanish saint had never yet come his way.  I badly wanted
the five hundred pounds, but does one barter one's Lares and Penates?
Could I betray Barbara, and risk the curse she would surely put upon
me?  I smiled and shook my head: Barbara was not for sale.

So here she was, riding on a mule all day, and standing beside the
tent-pole all night in the melancholy attitude to which she was
eternally condemned.  It was a humble position that she occupied on the
ground, and it was fortunate that she took up but little room, for a
small tent is no place for superfluous objects.  Our great sheep-skin
coats, reeking of fleece and leather, especially when they were wet,
were bulky and unwieldy, but the nights were so cold that in spite of
them we often shivered.  One encumbrance, indeed, we left behind at
Do-Pulan: the huge Jeroboam of wine which we had brought so carefully
up from Shiraz, fell and was smashed to pieces.  This was a blow:
henceforth, however tired, we should have nothing in the evenings to
revive us.

Do-Pulan, indeed, was an unlucky place.  Copley Amory's servant Rahim
was kicked off his mule and fell on a rock, hurting his back; and I
lost my temper at breakfast.  Not without provocation.  We had had an
argument at dinner: Gladwyn Jebb had suggested that we might get up at
five in the morning; I went on strike and said nothing would induce me
to get up before five-thirty.  The sun did not rise till five-thirty;
nor would I.  My rage, therefore, knew no bounds when next morning
Bagh'er entered my tent with hot water at half-past four.  It was
pitch-dark, and bitterly cold, for we were at an altitude of nearly
five thousand feet; there was, however, no object to be gained by
trying to go to sleep again when the camp echoed with the noises
attendant on packing up; besides, I wanted Gladwyn's blood with the
least possible delay.  A cold grey light had begun to spread over the
camp as I emerged, and the last stars were paling in the sky.  I fell
on Gladwyn with fury, unappeased even when he established his
innocence.  I recognise, looking back on it, that I must in those first
days have proved an extremely disagreeable companion.  I suppose I was
over-tired.

Those camp breakfasts, when nobody was quarrelsome, had their charm.
We ate huge bowls of _mast_--the native curdled milk, like Devonshire
cream,--with spoonfuls of apricot jam stirred into it, making golden
streaks in the white.  All around us the business of packing up the
camp was going on.  Tents fell, helplessly collapsing as the pegs were
withdrawn, turning from shapely brown shelters to flattened crumpled
squares.  Our luggage strewed the ground.  The blackened ring of our
fire looked as melancholy and meaningless as the glasses of a previous
night's debauch.  Diversions occurred: a mule would kick up its heels
as the girths were being tightened, and breaking loose, would gallop
through the camp, scattering the contents of its pack as it went,
pursued by the muleteers.  We ourselves ate our breakfasts as the Jews
the Passover: standing, for our solitary chair and the suitcases which
were our seats at dinner had already been hoisted up and corded on to
the mules.  The servants hovered round, ready to snatch away a spoon or
a cup to pack it, the moment we set it down.  Meanwhile the sun struck
suddenly on the crest of a neighbouring hill, and, sweeping grandly
down the flank, crept towards us till the light like a low golden tide
lapped round our feet.  Day had come, and we must be off.




VII

I had wanted to walk all the way; my intention had been not to ride an
inch--an unproclaimed intention, since I knew that my prospective
companions would say, "Then you can't go at all," and there would be no
end of a bother and argument,--but after that second day I recognised
my defeat.  Spiritual defeats have their interest; but this was a mere
physical defeat, a shabby affair--simply a question of bruised toes and
blistered heels.  I should have to climb on to the back of a
four-footed animal and allow myself to be transported, a mere package;
I who had stalked so proud.  A shred of vanity, of self-defence,
however, remained: I refused to ride the animal that had been provided
for me.  Such are the subtleties of the curious process known as
"saving one's face".  I felt that, by being tiresome, I had saved my
face.  No mule would content me but Hossein's special pet, the
smallest, most mouse-coloured of the caravan, a pampered creature, to
whom a load, other than human, was an unknown indignity; a lazy little
beast, to whom kicking, rearing, or running away, even falling over a
precipice, would, I instinctively felt, be too great an effort; a
mount, in fact, after my own heart, if a mount I must have.  I
remembered how Stevenson had hated Modestine,--or had thought he hated
her, until the moment came for them to part;--there was no insult too
great for him to heap on that poor beast, and indeed I suspect him of
definite unkindness: did he not bring her in at the end of the journey
"unfit to travel"? and although he appreciated her quakerish elegance
he admits that his heart remained cold as a potato, nor is he moved to
pity on seeing drops of blood appear on her small rump under the
prickings of his goad.  Now it was not in me to hate the Mouse,
compelled though I was to ride upon her.  It was not, after all, the
Mouse's fault that my endurance had given out; she was there, not to
humiliate me, but to relieve my weariness, small, passive, obliging, so
that I very soon conceived a great affection for her and began to talk
of bringing her back to England, a suggestion received with horror by
those who foresaw that on them would fall the burden of making the
necessary arrangements.

The Mouse had this great advantage, that she stood perfectly still
while one climbed on and off, unlike a horse, who walks away with his
rider still hopping with one foot in the stirrup.  I soon discovered
that by copying the ejaculation of the muleteers I could bring her to a
dead stop, so dead that nothing but a kick in the ribs would move her
on again.  The truth is that she was always half asleep, except when
she had to choose her way over a bad bit of road, and then she
collected her wits; her long floppy ears would stiffen, she would pause
deliberately to take a good look; then, having once made up her mind,
she would carry out her scheme with primness and certainty, putting
down her little hooves between the stones with never a false step, and
it must be said in justice to her that her judgement was infallible;
the Mouse never made a mistake.  She knew exactly what she could do and
what she could not; unlike Taha's horse, who would stupidly attempt any
obstacle his master put him at, with the result that he sometimes came
clattering down; not so the Mouse, who if she mistrusted her own
powers, after investigation, would turn aside and go round another way.

Our first ride together took us up a particularly rough bit of the
road, the Barreh Murdeh (Dead Lamb) Pass, where the track practically
ceased to exist, and lost itself in the rocks that strewed the hillside
under the dwarf oaks.  We simply scrambled over these stones as best we
might, bent only on getting to the top.  We were overtaken by a
merchant riding on a beautiful dapple-grey horse; he waved to us gaily
as he passed, followed by his servant, who, perched on the top of a
pile of carpets on a mule, had some difficulty in keeping up with his
master.

[Illustration: THE BARREH MURDEH PASS]

It was cold and the sky looked stormy ahead; we were not happy;
presently a cold small rain began to fall; the rocks ceased abruptly,
and we were making our way, very high up and still rising, over greasy
red mud; then, as we came to the top of the hill, the rain changed to
snow.  We stumbled along, on foot, in the teeth of a blizzard, the
coats of our mules getting shaggy with lumps of ice, and our saddles
turning dark with the wet, but it was impossible to ride.  We knew that
we still had a long way to go; the view in front of us was by now
entirely obscured; we were trying to disguise from one another how
dreary we thought the prospect, when to our grateful surprise we came
suddenly on a hut by the side of the road.

These huts, common enough in the rest of Persia, were practically
non-existent in the Bakhtiari country--we cannot have passed more than
two or three on the whole length of the road--so our delight was
unbounded on coming at such a moment on this opportune shelter.  We
crowded in, stamping about, and shaking the snow from our hats, and
there was our merchant with his acolyte, squatting on a carpet over the
fire.  Acquaintance soon ripens between travellers on those lonely
hills, and we greeted one another as old friends, for all that our
previous glimpse of him had been but a wave of the hand and a shout as
he passed us so gallantly beneath the oaks.  With the universal
courtesy of Persians, he immediately began unrolling his bundle for our
accommodation; this bundle contained his bedding; he would not listen
to our protests that we were dripping wet, as was all too obviously the
case, but spread his quilt and mattress on the floor, inviting us to
seat ourselves, which we did without further ado.  It was, indeed,
almost impossible to remain standing, for the smoke from the fire got
into our eyes and made us cry, to the amusement of the Persians, who
can sit all day in a hut filled with smoke without the smallest
discomfort, but to us it was agony, and even when sitting on the floor
at the fire-level, we were constantly obliged to get up and go to the
fresh air to relieve our streaming eyes.

At one art the Persians are adept: they can make a fire burn; that is
to say, they lay their wood scientifically, in cross-pieces, with a
hole for the draught scooped in the embers beneath, which is more than
can be said for any English housemaid.  So they had a good fire
burning, which soon set our wet clothes on to steam; they brought us
tea in the usual little glasses; we ate our hard-boiled eggs and our
chocolate, talked to our friend the merchant, and felt the warmth
running again through our thawing limbs.  Still, a long way lay before
us, and the snow fell as thickly as ever; we were anxious to start off
as soon as possible, lest all sign of the track be covered up.  So when
the jingle of bells announced the approach of the rest of our caravan,
we knew that the time had come for us to take up our sticks, sling the
rein over our wrists, and be going.  The caravan came up and halted,
with drenched packs and heads held down against the driving snow; we
allowed them time for the muleteers to shake the snow off their cloaks,
to warm themselves a little, rubbing their raw hands and squeezing the
frozen drops off their moustaches, to drink a glass of tea and exchange
some questions and answers with the hut-keepers about the road; then,
taking leave of our friend the merchant, we set off in a long string,
blundering over half-covered rocks, sliding suddenly on hidden mud,
unable to see more than a short way ahead of us by reason of the
falling snow.  For a long time we went, advancing perhaps twenty yards
at a spurt, then stopping to let the pack-mules rest, which they did
gratefully, poor beasts, with heaving flanks steaming on the grey air;
and which we did gratefully too, for the going was heavy through snow
and mud, uphill mostly, stepping in each other's tracks, punting
ourselves along with our tall sticks.  It sounds unpleasant; it was
unpleasant; but for some reason we did not mind much, it was at any
rate a definite hardship, and so easier to bear than the poor drab,
dragged-out fatigue of the two previous days.  In fact, we were quite
gay and good-humoured, and ready to laugh when anybody fell down.

Sultan Ali, the cook, that Napoleonic man, was the only one who took it
wrongly.  He was not accustomed to snow, and, like a camel, could not
deal with it at all.  I came on him sitting on a boulder, nursing his
toes, almost in tears.  Apparently he had heard of frostbite, and
thought that this calamity had overtaken him.  He was of course wearing
the white canvas shoe which is the Persian's national foot-gear, and
was soaked to the skin; but when I pointed out to him that such
peasants as we had met were walking barefoot, carrying their shoes in
their hand, a sense of shame goaded him and he revived enough to
stagger on.  "Why not ride?" I suggested, but he looked at the mules,
most of whom were fallen and floundering under their packs in the snow,
and mournfully shook his head.  I could not but sympathise.  A
bedraggled Mouse followed me; I had no inclination to ride myself.

Then we came to the inevitable descent, which always seemed the hardest
part, at the end of a long day; and zigzagged down the rough track to
the village of Gandom Kar.  It was amazing to me that the mules could
keep their feet, under their heavy burdens.  Yet they got down without
mishap, and we came down upon the two or three houses which constituted
the village, and again dried ourselves in a hospitable hut, while the
population looked on, interested but never importunate, and a girl fed
her baby meanwhile at her young brown breast.




VIII

I remembered the gardener at Isfahan, who had told me that _Iris
reticulata_, that gold-and-purple early comer, grew at Gandom Kar, so
when we had eaten I went out to look for it.  _Iris reticulata_ was
nowhere to be seen, needless to say; but the hills were blue with grape
hyacinths, among the young corn, glistening with drops of rain, and
narcissus (not in flower) grew in large patches in swampy ground;
still, I was disappointed at not finding _reticulata_, having meant to
collect at least a thousand bulbs.

There is a peculiar pleasure in bringing home plants which one has
collected oneself in distant countries.  Quite possibly that pleasure
may plunge its roots in the fertile soil of vanity; "Yes," I should
say, "a nice group, isn't it?  I collected the bulbs in the Bakhtiari
country."  But that would only be when strangers were present, forced
to admire my garden.  Indeed, so rathe is _Iris reticulata_, that they
would scarcely be able to find anything else to admire.  But on
February evenings, when I strolled alone, the oaks still bare in the
woods and the rooks busy after the plough, surely it would be a purer
pleasure that I should get from the gold-and-purple patch springing out
of the wintry ground?  Or is vanity so deeply rooted as to be still
operative even _vis--vis_ oneself?  Would the sight of the little
iris, the little alien, which may be bought from any nurseryman, but
which had been brought by me from its native hills, awaken in me merely
the satisfactory reflection that I had not always been, after all, an
armchair traveller?  Would a feeling of superiority rise in me, that
none of my friends had ever been to Gandom Kar?  Honesty compels me to
admit that such is probably the case.  I have a pan of rhizomes, which
throw up a feeble green shoot in spring, indicating that some faint,
terrified life survives in them, and I know in my secret heart that I
printed the wooden label not entirely for purposes of identification;
no, for even without that label I should remember well enough what that
grit-filled pan contained.  Yet I printed, "IRISES--QUERY, SMALL BLACK?
FROM THE PLAIN OF PASAGARDAE--TOMB OF CYRUS--APRIL 1927."  It is true
that no one sees it, for it stands on cinders in a secluded corner with
suitable companions--"SPECIE TULIP, YELLOW, FROM THE JARJARUD HILLS";
"ROSA PERSICA, QUERY, ORANGE?" "IRIS, SMALL BLUE--FROM SHIRAZ"--but
there is always the offchance that some true botanist might stray that
way, and incline his head obliquely to read the labels.  And then I
should feel--quite unjustifiably--enrolled in the company of Reginald
Farrar and Kingdon Ward.

_Iris reticulata_ at Gandom Kar certainly deprived me of that
satisfaction.  Authorities on irises give it as a native of the
Caucasus, and ascribe to it in its wild state a reddish-purple colour
different from the blue-purple it displays in English gardens.  But the
_reticulata_ I saw in flower at Isfahan were undoubtedly blue-purple,
and the gardener was positive that they came from Gandom Kar in the
Bakhtiari country.  I offer this to iris experts without comment.  The
villagers, to whom I appealed, and who in their charming Persian way
were at once eager and interested, denied, although regretfully, all
knowledge of the flower.  "Nerkis!" they said at once, meaning
narcissus; but I was not looking for the narcissus.  (I have, however,
flowered the Persian narcissus without any difficulty in England; it
has a very sweet and slightly different scent.)  The grape hyacinths
were not worth bringing home, for, unlike the Italian variety, they
were entirely without scent.  Besides, they were of an inky blue,
almost black; attractive only through the great profusion in which they
grew, as thick in the young corn as bluebells in an English wood.
Disgusted with the failure of my search, I returned to camp, only to
find that Gladwyn Jebb, who had gone out to look for partridges, had
come home, not with partridges, but with a bunch of Crown Imperials.
This revived my hopes, which, excited by Mrs. Isabella Bishop's
accounts of the "innumerable flowers", had been sinking slowly as we
progressed day by day, finding nothing on our path but a few mauve
crocuses and a small though brilliant scarlet ranunculus.  Mrs. Bishop,
however, was writing of May and June, and I fancy that her carpets of
tulip, iris, primula, and blue linum had not yet made their appearance
in April.

We stuck the Crown Imperials into the ropes of our brown tents, and the
camp looked more festive than we had seen it since we started.  Our
spirits rose accordingly.  We lit a huge fire and dined beside it, in
the content which comes of physical fatigue when not too excessive, and
which is begotten of the sense of having overcome a good day's
difficulty.  A Bakhtiari in a white cloak galloped past on a white
horse as we dined; seen in the glow of our fire, in the dusk, his white
cloak floating out behind him, he looked ghostly and romantic; a
visitant out of the hills.  Our camp was pitched on a long natural
terrace; we looked towards the south, down a gorge where a river
tumbled; the sky was stormy, and thunder rolled intermittently among
the hills, but nothing interrupted our night's rest except the barking
of a dog and the conversation of our guards as they sat round the fire.




IX

Next day we plunged down into the gorge, following the river by a ledge
of path.  Harold Nicolson and I were alone with Hossein, the others
having, more prudently, as it turned out, remained behind with the
caravan.  At this low level, shut in as we were by the high cliffs of
the ravine, the temperature softened with every mile; the air became
warm and steamy; the stunted oaks, which up on the Barreh Murdeh Pass
had been bare, now burst into leaf; dripping rocks overhung the way,
sprouting with fern and mosses; the coarse green leaf of autumn
crocuses covered the banks, and Crown Imperials, stiff as the flowers
on a Gothic tapestry, shot up, brilliantly orange, between the
boulders.  (We noticed, however, that a large proportion of the bulbs
came up "blind", as is their disappointing habit in English gardens.)
In all this long ravine we met nobody, but had it all to ourselves,
with the rush of water and the narrow strip of sky overhead; we could
not see or hear even our own caravan, which, as we afterwards
discovered, had taken another path and so missed out the gorge
altogether.  Now the road bent downwards, and led us across the river,
into the thick wood of oak that grew on the opposite bank.  It was dark
in there, and the track disappeared; we had to make our way, bent
double to escape the branches, slipping and sliding in greasy black mud
on a sharply tilted slope.  We met a peasant who, recognising perhaps
that we were in distress and in need of consolation, gravely offered us
some sticks of wild celery.  Up till then, Harold Nicolson and I had
very carefully avoided making any comments to one another about our
journey, but now our tacit resolution broke down.  "This damned
country!" we said, almost in tears, "why did we ever come?"  We agreed
that we did not even think the scenery beautiful.  "I _loathe_
mountains," he said, standing there in the wood, muddied up to the
knees.  "I _hate_ tents," said I.  "We've got to go on with it,
though," we said.  We stared at each other, so woebegone that we
finally burst out laughing.

The grumble improved our spirits, and we ploughed our way out of the
ravine, till we came to a place where we could ride, and climbed
another hill, all alive with hoopoes and the cuckoo.  It had not
occurred to us that we had, in fact, lost our way, so that we were
puzzled by the manifest anger of Taha when he rejoined us at a canter,
coming from the opposite direction.  It was in the same state of
defiant innocence that we met the others safely with the caravan, in
the village of Gumish-Su.  Where on earth had we been? they wanted to
know, irritable as people are irritated with relief after anxiety.
Blandly we described the beauties of the ravine they had not seen.
Crossly they retaliated that we, by our impetuous foolishness, had
missed Sarkhun, where an ice-cold river joins a warm underground river
issuing from among the rocks.  Defiant and aggrieved respectively, we
ate our sandwiches in no very amicable mood by the stream at Gumish-Su,
and a sarcastic note which will be found in the appendix at the end of
this volume testifies to the displeasure we incurred from Gladwyn Jebb.

[Illustration: RUINED CARAVANSERAI AT SHALIL]

A heavy rain began to fall and we sheltered for some time in the
chai-khaneh.  Harold Nicolson, who characteristically had forgotten to
bring a coat, bought for a few _krans_ a cloak of stiff black felt from
a peasant; as the sleeves, which were half the usual length, were sewn
up into a point and stuck out like stumps on either side, it made him
look like a penguin, but at least it kept him dry.  Thus equipped, we
set out again, and after a long ride up another muddy pass, came out on
to a level of high country showing us a new burst of mountain ranges,
with a beautiful distant view of the snow-covered and rounded peak of
the Sabzeh Kuh.  It was muddy all the way, however, and we began again
to curse and despair, not knowing that that was to be our last day of
serious mud, and that henceforth we should be on rocky tracks, which,
however painful to the feet, were preferable to this slime.  The sight
of our friendly merchant, once more overtaking us in his gallant way on
his fine horse, cheered us for a moment.  But the way seemed very long
indeed that day, and my temper grew correspondingly short.  I could
gladly have pushed poor Taha over a precipice, rifle and all, when in
answer to my enquiries he could only reply: "Nasdik, nasdik,--quite
near, quite near."  It was useless to ask, "How far?" for Taha's reply
would have been given in _farsakhs_, and the Persian _farsakh_ is by no
means an exact measure of distance, but varies according to the nature
of the road; that is to say, a _farsakh_ of uphill going, or over a
stony road, is longer than a _farsakh_ downhill or on a smooth road.
Roughly speaking, it means the distance that a mule or horse can cover
at a walking-pace in an hour.  With my previous experience, I felt
pretty sure that before we could be "quite near" we should have to go
down another of those long zigzagging descents, stubbing our toes
against the stones, and sure enough we presently came to it and pitched
rapidly down into another gorge, with another foaming river, the
Bazuft, fondly hoping that at any moment we might see the welcome sight
of the grazing mules and the four brown tents.  The camp was nowhere to
be discovered.  "Nasdik, nasdik," said Taha, making a gesture of
encouragement.  We went along the path, which led up and down, up and
down, in a maddening switchback above the river, now climbing up the
hilly bank, now swooping down again till it brought us nearly to the
water's edge, but never by any chance on the level.  The gorge was
certainly a fine one, had we not been too tired and cross to care.




X

We found our camp, finally, pitched within the broken walls of the
ruined caravanserai of Shalil.  The muleteers tried to persuade us into
one of the rooms of the building, which they said was warm; warm it
certainly was, but it was also thick with smoke.  We preferred to
shiver in our tents, after tramping down the lacy hemlock which grew
waist-high, as though it were still in the open air with no dwelling of
man, however transitory, roofing it over.

Scarcely had we settled in, and collected enough wood for a fire, than
a messenger arrived accompanied by a large black sheep.  He was the
bearer of an invitation from some Khans encamped a few miles down the
road.  Would we not pack up our tents, and consider ourselves their
guests for the night?  They were preparing a _pasirayi_, or reception,
in our honour.  Appalled by the prospect of packing up our tents, and
knowing only too well how Persian receptions were apt to be prolonged,
we decided to risk offending our hospitable though unknown friends, and
despatched the messenger with a polite refusal.  The sheep remained
behind with us, and we ate it for our dinner, reminded thereby that
Omar appreciated the value of mutton, for in that quatrain which is
familiar in its more poetic English rendering he says:

  "If a loaf of wheaten bread be forthcoming,
  A gourd of wine, _and a thigh-bone of mutton,_
  And then, if thou and I be sitting in the wilderness,
  That were a joy not within the power of any Sultan."


The next day dawned warm and sunny.  It was almost the first time we
had seen the sun, and certainly the first time we had felt any heat in
it.  Shalil in the early morning light was very lovely; the river
rushed musically down the valley, and the hillside opposite, where the
sun was striking, was sprinkled with moving flocks.  Our path led us
along the valley; it was no gorge like the gorge below Gandom Kar on
the previous day, but a fairly wide and gentle valley, with well-wooded
slopes; in no way dramatic, but pleasant enough, though we could not
help slightly resenting this tame scenery, having travelled so far to
find it.  "We might as well", we said, "have gone to the Tyrol."  But
there was plenty in store for us that day which we should certainly not
have found anywhere but in the Bakhtiari hills.

[Illustration: DAWN AT SHALIL]

The path, soaring upwards, brought us out on to the hilltop.  Here we
met a fine young man, riding on a fine horse, and attended by a
servant.  He galloped up to us, pulling his horse almost on to its
haunches, to greet us in the most friendly fashion.  This was
Nosratollah Khan, the son of Sardar Zaffar, the Il-Khani; in his long
white robe, with his rifle slung across his shoulders and his black
eyes flashing as he smiled, he cut a very handsome figure among his
native hills.  The Khans were awaiting us, he said; and inwardly
groaning, since we were not to escape the _pasirayi_ after all, we took
leave of Nosratollah and pursued our way.  It was not long before we
came upon the nomads' camp.  The black tents were pitched on a ledge
overhanging the river Bazuft, which cut its jade-green way through a
narrow gorge of rock hundreds of feet below.  Why they had chosen that
dizzy place for their encampment we could not imagine, unless they
liked a grand view, or were actually happier perched on a ledge in
constant danger of rolling down the slope.  Anyhow, there they were,
and came out to meet us, leading us in through the squalor of the
servants' quarters, to a tent which had been got ready for the
_pasirayi_.  There were cushions and carpets, and trays of little
sweets, and of course tea and cigarettes.  Conversation was not
difficult, for the Khans were naturally eager for news of the outer
world, and we for our part had plenty of questions to ask about the
road.  But if the conversation was not difficult, it was long.  We
began to grow anxious, for we had a long way to go, and the sun was
already high, but the Khans showed no disposition to speed us on our
way, and to the Persian mind it is not only rude but incomprehensible
to be in a hurry.  Besides, our principal host, Ali Khan, for all his
courtesy to us, appeared to be in an irritable mood, swearing at his
servants, and we did not want to offend him.  Had it not been for our
anxiety about the time, it would have been pleasant to sit there in the
tent, watching the remarkable scene which was taking place before us.

For there, on the steep hillside, rising from the opposite bank of the
river, we beheld for the first time the tribes really on the move.  So
far, we had met but few people on the road: our merchant with his
carpets, the Il-Khani's son, a stray herdsman or a group of
charcoal-burners, a solitary caravan coming up with petrol from the
south.  But henceforth, as we could see, we should be engulfed among
the nomads.  We had as yet very little idea of what this would mean; we
saw, indeed, the slope covered with moving figures, but we scarcely
realised then that those figures represented but the advance guard of a
stream which would flow against us even until we reached Malamir.

We must, we said finally and firmly, be going.  At that, Ali Khan gave
an order, and a little brown lamb was brought in, with a brass bowl
ready to catch the blood from its throat.  We begged, however, that the
lamb might be spared, though what we really meant was that we ourselves
should be spared that horrid sight, and that it might be allowed to
accompany us alive.  Our hosts were amused at this, but acquiesced at
once, and rose to escort us out of the camp.  The cause of Ali Khan's
irritability then transpired.  He was not, he said, feeling very well:
could the English, who were all doctors, do anything for him?  Lionel
Smith extracted his medicine chest from the pack of a mule, and stuck
the thermometer under Ali's tongue.  The other Khans all crowded round
to watch.  Lionel Smith then examined the thermometer, but seeing that
he looked very much puzzled we enquired what was the matter.  He said
he couldn't find the mercury, for which he was looking in the region of
100 or 101.  We all peered into the thermometer in turn, and
discovered that he had been unable to find the mercury because it was
up at the other end of the tube: Ali Khan, in fact, had a temperature
of 108.  Fearful lest the man should die before our eyes, and we be
blamed, we left him a large supply of quinine and hastily took our
departure.

We were told afterwards that men frequently run such temperatures in
the mountains, but continue to go about as though nothing were the
matter.  Poor Ali Khan, no wonder he was irritable.




XI

Down at the foot of the hill, in the gorge where the bright-green river
crept between the rocks, we halted and looked up at the hill we had to
climb.  The whole hillside was noisy with bleatings.  It seemed, as we
gazed upwards at the trail, that the hillside was in fact coming down
upon us; as though the stones and boulders had been loosened, and leapt
down the hill, now singly, now in a moving flood, pouring down steadily
from the very summit, with incessant cries among the stunted oaks.  Far
overhead, in the blue, planed a couple of eagles.  The morning sun
blazed still in the east, throwing long blue shadows on the distant
snow-mountains.  And the air was filled with the distressful cries of
the flock as they poured down the precipitous slopes, driven onward by
the voice of the shepherds.

Twice a year, in spring and autumn, the tribes move.  In spring they go
up from the scorched plains towards which we ourselves were travelling,
to the higher plains of Chahar Mahal; in the autumn they come down
again, driving all their possessions before them, over the two hundred
miles of the road.  And here were we in the midst of them,--very
literally in the midst, for the flocks surged round our mules, making
progress impossible, and we had to sit patient in the saddle, looking
down upon the sea of backs, till the way was cleared and the mules were
able to scramble a few yards further, up the steep rocky track, with a
sudden straining of the muscles, a sudden putting forth of strength;
and when we stopped again, the green river below us seemed a little
further away, the beat of the sun a little more powerful.  We were
going against all that moving life, being always confronted with faces
and never with tails, driving our wedge into the stream, that parted
for an instant and then closed up again and went on; it gave one, more
than anything, the sense of slavery, of necessity; these nomads, I
thought as I kicked the Mouse into another scramble, for all their
independence are not really independent at all; they are hunted and
driven, they all go the same way, like the rest of mankind; and we
ourselves felt pleasantly exalted by the flattery of travelling in the
opposite direction.

So many thousand faces.  The long, silly faces of sheep, the satyric
faces of goats with their little black horns; the patient faces of tiny
donkeys, picking their way under their heavy loads; and then, six or
eight little heads of newly born kids, bobbing about, sewn up in a sack
on a donkey's back.  For there were a great number of kids and lambs;
in fact, a great deal of young life of all sorts.  The older ones were
obliged to run, skipping over the stones, kids and foals and calves and
children, but the youngest had to be carried: a litter of puppies
slithering about on a mule's pack, a baby in a cradle slung across its
mother's shoulders.  The hens travelled too, perched on the back of a
donkey.  Behind each separate herd--for each herd, in its way,
represented a self-contained little family--came the men, beating the
stragglers up with sticks and uttering strange cries which the beasts
recognise and obey, then came the women, also beating up the
stragglers, young women in bright red and yellow shawls, old women who
must have crossed the mountains a hundred times.  They were all too
weary or too apathetic to stare much at us.  Some, indeed, stopped us
to make a practical enquiry: was the snow deep on the passes? were the
rivers in flood? was the mud bad? for we had come down the way they
must go up, and in those hills news circulates only by word of mouth.
We reassured them; they nodded dully, and passed on.

We had come down the way that they must go up, and knew the exhaustion
that lay before them, the passes to be climbed, the steep descents that
would lead them down on the other side, the changes of weather, the
long stretches up the ravines where the greasy mud checks every
footstep.  But for us, each difficulty conquered was conquered for ever
and left behind; we should not pass that way again.  For them it was
different.  It was only one journey among many journeys, renewed twice
a year from the cradle to the grave.

In complexion they were swarthy, with tufts of black hair curling out
from under the _kolah_.  The blue linen of their long coats emphasised
the natural darkness of their skin.  The men were all clean-shaven, and
rather high cheek-boned; the broad Tartar type was common.  Some of the
younger women looked handsome as they passed us on their lean ponies,
their heads covered by their gaudy handkerchiefs; but it was clear that
the hard life aged them prematurely, and their bodies, moreover, were
hunched and shapeless under the ragbag of garments in which they were
clothed.  They sat on their ponies, merely an extra bundle piled on the
top of the other bundles.

[Illustration: ON THE MURVARID PASS]

The Bakhtiari are a proud people: they claim that they alone, among the
Persians, remained unconquered by Alexander.  This is a double boast,
vaunting alike their warlike spirit and their ancient origin.  To this
day they are quarrelsome and independent, settling their disputes
according to their own code, dealing out violent justice to their own
transgressors, resentful of governmental interference.  They choose
their own leaders, the Il-Khani and the Il-begi, although they do, in
fact, acknowledge the suzerainty of the Shah; but the Shah is in
Teheran, and Teheran is a long way off.  But the casual traveller down
the Bakhtiari Road would not be predominantly impressed either with the
proud savagery or the idyllic simplicity of this people.  Rather, he
would bear away the sense of the weariness of a pastoral cycle; the
sense of necessity in the struggle for mere existence.  Those who have
seen it, know that the beauty of a pastoral life is largely a literary
convention.  The truth is that nature is as hard a taskmaster as
civilisation, and that realities under such conditions are very bare
facts indeed.

The men who drive the flocks are tired.  The women who follow the men
are tired too; often they have just become, or are on the point of
becoming, mothers.  The children who drag along after their parents
limp and whimper.  To us, who come from Europe, there is something
poetic in a Persian shepherd calling to his goats and sheep; but the
Persian shepherd himself sees nothing except the everyday business of
getting a lot of tiresome animals along.  Since romance is the reality
of somewhere else or of some other period, here, on the Bakhtiari Road,
this truth is doubly applicable.  Persia is certainly somewhere else,
and a long way, too, in relation to England, and this Biblical form of
existence certainly belongs to a period other than the twentieth
century--it is an anachronism in our eyes, and therefore romantic; the
double elements of space and time, geographical and chronological,
necessary to romance, are thus amply satisfied.  We are on the
Bakhtiari Road, in one of the wildest parts of Persia; let us accept it
at its face value, and see what is to be got out of it in terms of the
picturesque.  Let us be quite cynical about it; let us, by all means,
be romantic while we may.

[Illustration: NEAR THE TOP OF THE PASS]

The hillside, then, is alive with flocks.  "Baa-a-a!" go the sheep, and
"Meh-h-h!" go the goats.  They bleat, they bleat; even to-day, in
England, when a flock of sheep is turned loose into the meadow at the
bottom of my garden, and their bleatings reach me, I whirl back to the
Murvarid Pass, and feel the sun hot on my hands; a queer sensation,
analogous to that sensation with which one wakes at night convinced
that one's bed has turned itself round the other way.  There are
thousands of them, jostling, leaping, hustling each other among the
boulders.  Some of them are very lame, but what of that?  That is
reality, not romance; lame or not lame, they must go forward.  There
are two hundred miles to cover before the sun gets too hot and the
already scant pasture shrivels up.  So the shepherds come after them
with sticks.  "Oh", say the shepherds,--a flat, English "Oh" that
sounds curiously out of place on the Persian hills.  Oh.  A real
Cockney vowel.  But the beasts respond.  They leap forward as if in
terror.  We, on our mules, sit motionless while they huddle by.  The
men take very little notice of us, unless they stop to ask a question;
they do not seem to notice that we are Europeans,--and, as such,
figures of romance to them, surely, coming as we do from another place?
No, to them we are simply a caravan travelling in the opposite
direction, an obstacle, albeit a patient and long-suffering obstacle,
to be passed.  Oh.  And the sea of backs surges round the legs of our
mules.  The smell of fleeces comes up to us, acrid.  The men follow, in
their blue linen coats and high black felt hats, and their sticks fall
with a thud on the woolly backs.  Oh.  The sun is hot and high.  The
jade-green river flickers in the sun down in the ravine.  The
snow-mountains stretch out like a spine in the distance.  An old woman
passes us on foot, carrying across her shoulders a limp baby donkey.
Some squawking, flapping hens pass, perched on a load of pots and pans
on a pony's back.  A litter of puppies, that presently will be savage,
camp-guarding dogs, but now are round, woolly, and frightened, pass
clinging and sliding on another pack.  They try to growl as they go by,
but without much conviction.  A child passes, beating up his flock of
lambs and kids,--youth put in charge of youth.  Oh.  And then a fresh
shower of sheep and goats, animated boulders.  How stony the road is!
How slow our progression!  Come along, come along.  Oh.

This, then, was life shorn of all mechanical ingenuity.  One forgets
too readily that there are still places in the world which civilisation
has been utterly unable to touch.  Even the wheel, most elementary of
mechanical devices, here did not, could not, exist.  Dawn, the hour at
which one started; dusk, the hour at which one stopped; springs, at
which one drank; beasts of burden, to which one bound one's moving
home; a beast from the flock, which one slaughtered and ate fresh;
fire; a story; sleep.  There was nothing else.

[Illustration: DEH DIZ]

In the evenings we saw the nomads under a different aspect, when we had
pitched our own camp, squatting by their black tents, the smoke of
their pipes rising upwards with the smoke of their fires, while the
women cooked and the animals strayed browsing.  It was then, when they
were at rest, and the sense of their weary progress was suspended, that
the charm of a pastoral existence reasserted itself.  Along the road,
one was conscious only of harshness, violence, and fatigue.  The
limping horse, the dying ram, the woman near to her delivery, the man
with his foot bound up in bloody rags--all these were painful sights,
made more painful by the knowledge that there could be no respite and
no relief.  But in the evenings, in some quiet valley, with a spring
gushing from a rock near by, and the moon newly risen from behind the
hill, then the world did indeed seem to have returned to an early,
limpid simplicity.  Theocritus and the Bible took on a fresh and more
vivid significance.  The pastoral and the patriarchal, ceasing to be
decorative merely as a convention of literature, became desirable also
as a part of life.

Meanwhile we climbed for most of that day, conquering step by step the
Murvarid Pass, only to drop down again, having reached the top; and as
evening fell we came down on the lovely valley of Deh Diz, with its
single sentinel poplar and a ruined castle in the distance, and the
long ridge of the snowy Kuh-i-Mangasht beyond.  Our camping-place this
time was in an orchard of pomegranates, beside a clear mountain stream,
on a grassy terrace strewn with rocks and boulders.  The ropes had
already been untied; the packs had fallen to the ground; the men were
bending over them sorting out our possessions; the little brown lamb
which the Khans had given us, and which had trotted meekly all day
beside our caravan, was hanging dead and skinned from a bough with a
drop of blood at the end of its nose; a thread of blue smoke was
already rising from our kitchen.  The evening was very soft and serene,
the surrounding hills enormous and shadowy.  A sense of peace crept
over our weary limbs, and a sense of sudden intimacy with this quiet
spot, which none of us, almost certainly, would ever see again.
Already its contours were familiar, and someone had picked a handful of
the little wild pink gladiolus, and put it in a glass on our rickety
camp table.  It is curious how quickly, in this kind of life, any
resting place becomes home.  It is as though the mind, instinctively
rejecting the implication of transitoriness, sought, by an excessive
adaptability, for compensation.  Yet we knew that when we left at
daybreak on the following morning, no trace would remain of our passage
but the blackened ring of our dead camp fire and four squares of
trodden grass, that were the floor of our tents.  The golden oriole
will return to the myrtle bough, and the spring will bubble without any
memory of those who stooped to fill their cups.

[Illustration: A WANDERING DERVISH, DEH DIZ]




XII

But we were not destined to leave Deh Diz on the following morning.  As
we were sitting round the fire after dinner, we heard a distant clap of
thunder, and the muleteers came running up to say that a storm was upon
us.  From the minutes between a flash of lightning and the next clap,
we reckoned that we had twenty minutes in which to prepare.  Everybody
ran in different directions, some to knock the picket-pegs of the mules
firmer into the ground, others to perform the same office for the
tent-ropes, others to dig little trenches round the tents, others to
carry our dinner table into shelter.  Scarcely were we ready for the
storm when it burst upon us.  We five had all gathered together into
the biggest tent, and as the storm crashed above us we hung on to the
tent-pole with our united strength, expecting every moment to be
carried away, tent and all, in the sudden gale of wind that tore
screaming up the valley.  The hail came down in torrents, battering on
the canvas, and we thought thankfully of our little hastily dug
trenches.  Peeping through the flap, we could see the valley wholly
illuminated by the magnificent flashes, with which the thunder was now
continuous; the snow on the distant ranges gleamed white, and the
valley showed an unearthly green, as the sky was torn asunder as with a
swift and golden sword.  The storm swept on; we heard it cracking over
the hills; it was as though the wheels of a great chariot had driven
over us, in the heavens, and were now rolling onwards, above the oak
forests and the black tents of the crouching nomads, describing great
circles, and returning now and then to visit our camp at intervals
through the night.




XIII

When we looked out in the morning, we saw to our astonishment that the
ground was white with snow.  There was no chance of continuing our
journey that day: the mules could never have carried the weight of the
soaking tents.  We were condemned to a day of inactivity at Deh Diz.
By ten o'clock, however, a warm sun had melted all the snow and the
tents were steaming like the flanks of a horse.  We hung all the wet
things we could find on the tent-ropes to dry, and stretched ourselves
on rugs in the sun, to the delight of a circle of inquisitive
villagers.  It was a change to spend such a lazy day.  We read the
Apocrypha, I remember, and wandered a little, but not very far afield,
not much further than the spring where we refilled our water bottles;
we admired the village giant, a grand figure at least seven foot high;
we talked with a wandering dervish, who strayed up to our camp carrying
a sort of sceptre, surmounted by the extended hand of Ali in shining
brass; we listened to a blind man chanting an interminable poem about
hazrat-i-'s (his Majesty Jesus); we watched the procession of women
going to the spring.  They crept past, with their empty goat-skins,
stealing furtive glances at us out of their long dark eyes; then
scurried on, in a burst of mischievous giggling, like a lot of children
caught in a conspiracy.  Presently they returned in a more sober mood,
weighted down by the heavy, black, dripping goat-skins that lay shining
across their shoulders and drenched their blue rags.  We watched them,
as one watches shy animals creeping out of a wood,--the wood of their
secret, unrevealed lives, spent in the mud-houses of Deh Diz, among
bickerings and jealousies and hardships, crouched over a pot on a
smoking fire, to the upraised voice of the mother-in-law, and the cry
of the child, till the figure of a man darkened the entrance, and a
babble arose, and a clutching for the partridges he carried in his
hand.  Very secretive they looked, as cunning as slaves and as silly as
children, but pretty under their snoods of blue, with the
characteristic surreptitious walk of those who go barefooted under
heavy burdens.  So we idled, becoming acquainted with the habits of
village life in Deh Diz, while our mules wandered loose among the
pomegranates, cropping at the grass, and the eagles circled high over
the hills where the gladiolus and the gentian grew.

[Illustration: WOMEN FETCHING WATER FROM THE SPRING, DEH DIZ]




XIV

The stage between Deh Diz and Qaleh Madresseh lay through the most
beautiful country we had as yet seen.  We were now in the very heart of
the ranges.  The road after first leaving Deh Diz is rather dull; it
follows the valley, in a switchback of small descents and small
ascents, wearisome and monotonous.  We had to find our interest where
best we could,--in immediate anticipation of the future, and distant
memorials of the past,--that is, in a man ploughing with two bullocks
amongst a scatter of boulders, yelling and groaning at his beasts, as
his primitive plough jerked up and down the slope, turning the sod
which perhaps would grow him a handful of corn in autumn, perhaps, and
perhaps not,--in a wayside cemetery, where among blood-red poppies
stone lions of archaic design commemorated the valour of bygone
Bakhtiari.  Poignant little cemeteries, these, lost in the hills.
Lions used to abound in these mountains, and the Bakhtiari, when they
did not want to fight the lion, had a special code for dealing with
him.  Lions were of two kinds, they said: Moslems and infidels.  They
might be known by their colour, the Moslem having a bright yellow coat,
the infidel a darker coat, with a black mane.  On meeting the Moslem it
was sufficient to say, "O cat of Ali, I am the servant of Ali", when
the lion would retire into the mountains.  On meeting the infidel,
however, the wisest course was to take to your heels.

Lions are reported even to-day in the Pusht-i-Kuh, the range stretching
to the north-west of the Bakhtiari range, and bears are known to exist
still in the Bakhtiari country; and leopards, notably the snow-leopard,
but we never saw so much as the spoor of any such animal.  Wolves,
lynxes, and hyenas were also common in Layard's day, adding to the
dangers which that indubitably brave man had to face whenever he set
out, sometimes alone, sometimes with a guide whom he justifiably
mistrusted, to look for tombs or inscriptions among the unmapped hills
and valleys.  I thought of Layard often as I rode along.  It is easy
enough to confront dangers when one is in perfect health, but Layard
himself never knew when an attack of ague would not compel him to
dismount, and, lying on the ground with his horse's bridle fastened to
his wrist, spend two or three hours in delirium and unconsciousness.
An unpleasant predicament, in a country infested by murderers,
marauders, and wild animals.  A brave man, I thought, as I looked at
the stone lions among the poppies.

[Illustration: PLOUGHING UNDER DIFFICULTIES]

By midday, we had rejoined the Karoun, and were riding along a rocky
path sheer above the river, which presently brought us to the splendid
gorge of Pul-i-Godar.  Here the Karoun winds between pointed hills, to
lose itself again in the intricacy of the ranges.  We left it far below
us, for after Pul-i-Godar the track rose steeply, bringing us to the
top of a pass, with truly splendid views over the tumbled country.
Strange geological convulsions had heaved up the hills; the strata,
which were as definitely marked as though they had been gigantic slates
laid flat one against the other, stood up on end instead of lying
horizontally superimposed; in some of the hills the lines of strata
were actually vertical, in others they were aslant, so that one could
imagine one saw the huge processes still at work.  In the course of
ages, those masses of rock would shift under the weight of some unseen
pressure; that which was now oblique would become perpendicular, and
that which was now perpendicular would gradually heel over until it
slanted to the opposite side.  These mountains were being slowly turned
upside down.  It was not so much the grandeur of the landscape which
impressed one--though that was sublime enough--as the awful evidence of
nature labouring on a cosmic scale.  The wild loneliness of the place,
the ramifications of the valleys leading up into unknown fastnesses,
the track made by generations of men crossing the mountains--all this
produced a sense of some elemental strength which excited and yet
sobered the imagination.

And now came the tribes, the slow-moving, inevitable tribes, winding up
through the hills in a long and constant stream.  Dwarfed though they
were by their native scenery, dwarfed into crawling battalions along
the narrow ledges, they still seemed an integral part of the country.
It seemed right that these mountains should witness their pilgrimage in
the two temperate seasons, and right also that the mountains should be
left to their own loneliness during the violence of summer and the
desolation of winter.  On the Murvarid Pass we had met the tribes
coming down upon us; now, as we made our way down into the valley
towards Qaleh Madrasseh, we met them coming up towards us, their
upturned glances swiftly reckoning the best way to pass, their animals
struggling up from rock to rock.  Down, down, round the hairpin bends,
seeing the path far below, still covered with that moving life; down,
right down, into the valley where the black tents were plentifully
sprinkled about.  Then--rest, on an open grassy space hemmed in by
hills; another day was over.

But Rahim, the well-meaning and unfortunate, tripped over a tent-rope
and upset our soup.

[Illustration: THE KAROUN AT PUL-I-GODAR]




XV

What would happen to oneself, I wonder, if one were to spend a long
time in such a place as Qaleh Madrasseh?  A week, a month, a year,
thirty years?  Thirty years.  If one were to go there at the age of
thirty, and remain fixed till one was sixty--the most important years
of life drifting by at Qaleh Madrasseh?  One would explore the paths
running up into the mountains, mere goat-tracks; one would come to some
unmapped village; one would meet and talk with a number of fresh,
ignorant, and unsophisticated people.  One would come to know every
wild flower in its season, and every change of light.  But what would
happen inside oneself?  That is really the important thing.  The only
goat-tracks one wants to explore are the goat-tracks of the mind,
running up into the mountains; the only sophistication one really wants
to escape from is one's own.  To start afresh; unprejudiced; untaught.
Changes of light, coming from the internal illumination, not from the
play of limelight over a ready-set scene.  Away from papers, away from
talk (though not, I stipulate, wholly away from books); cast back on
personal resources, personal and private enjoyments.

Thirty years at Qaleh Madrasseh.

Of what is civilised life composed?  Of movement, news, emotions,
conflict, and doubt.  I think these headings may be expanded to fit
every individual requirement?  Now at Qaleh Madrasseh most of them
would be deleted: movement certainly, except such slow and
contemplative movement as could be performed on one's own legs; news
certainly, except such local and practical news as would brush one in
passing by word of mouth.  But what of the growth of the mind?  The
mind would have only its own rich pasture to browse upon.  It would
rise superior even to these tribes flowing backwards and forwards,--and
in the space of thirty years it would witness the flowing of the tide
sixty times;--it would be filled with the sense of its own
inexhaustible riches, dependent upon no season, dependent upon no
change of pasture from Malamir to Chahar Mahal, no exchanging of the
south for the north.  The mind would browse and brood; sow and reap.
Few of us have known such leisure.  Those who achieve it are called
eccentrics for their pains: it seems to me that they are among the wise
ones of the earth.  The world is too much with us, late and soon; we
are too stringily entangled in our network of obligations and
relationships.

[Illustration: ABOVE THE KAROUN]

Those who crave for and find their fulfilments in action would not be
satisfied.  But I write as one with a strong head for large draughts of
solitude.  In fact, I suspect that I should look out for some less
frequented spot than Qaleh Madrasseh, some place further back in the
mountains where I should not see the tribes go by.  To live encamped
even within sight of the Bakhtiari Road, that rude, violent, and
occasional highway, would more than satisfy the misanthropy of most
people.  It would not satisfy mine.  To me, remote places hold the
magic which the romantic names held for Marlowe or Milton.  (It is my
only justification for writing books of travel.)  The analogy is exact
save in this particular: Marlowe had never seen Persepolis, but I have;
Milton had never seen Trebizond, but I have seen Qaleh Madrasseh.
Therefore I have my feet more firmly on the ground than either Marlowe
or Milton.  I know what I am talking about; to me Qaleh Madrasseh is
reality, to Milton Trebizond was only a means of escape.  Ithaca, Fiji,
would have served his purpose as well; as to the Bakhtiari shepherd,
shouting "Oh!" at his goats, Grasmere.  One name is as good as another,
provided it be sufficiently unfamiliar.  Proust himself, for all his
caustic intelligence, was not proof against the romantic appeal of
proper names.  Not only did the names Guermantes, Saint Loup,
Cambremer, evoke for him the romance of a world which he affected to
deride but by which he was obviously fascinated; but Proust himself,
taking flight for once from Paris, shows that he could be allured by
the exotic no less than Milton and Marlowe.  "On serait venu pour me
voir, pour me nommer roi," he says, "pour me saisir, pour m'arrter,
que je me serais laiss faire, sans dire un mot, sans rouvrir les yeux,
comme ces gens atteints du plus haut degr du mal de mer et qui, en
traversant la mer Caspienne, n'esquissent mme pas une rsistance si on
leur dit qu'on va les jeter  la mer."  The key of the sentence lies of
course in the words "mer Caspienne".  Proust uses them as Milton or
Marlowe would have used them, with the only difference that neither
Milton nor Marlowe would have associated the Caspian Sea with so
realistic a probability as sea-sickness.  But I, when I say Qaleh
Madrasseh, mean Qaleh Madrasseh.  I mean that exact spot, whose
contours I have learnt, whose clefts I have contemplated, enviously,
running up into the mountains and had no leisure to explore.  So far,
at least, I am on solid ground.  But of the effect of solitude in such
a place I know no more than did Marlowe or Milton.  That is a
speculation which, no doubt, would never have occurred to either of
those great poets or to their humbler contemporaries; they had not
acquired the habit of playing with hypothetical complications as we
have acquired it.  The very mention of the name sufficed, Persepolis
and Parthia, Ternate and Tidore, to hang an agreeably rosy veil between
themselves and reality; it brushed an Orient glow across their pages;
they felt no need to follow up the implications to their logical
conclusion.  Had anyone suggested their visiting Parthia or Persepolis,
Tidore or Ternate, they would no doubt have recoiled in dismay.  For
one thing, they probably had but a very vague idea of where these
places were situated.  But I protest that, did occasion offer, I would
eagerly embrace those thirty years at Qaleh Madrasseh, though with an
equally vague idea of what the consequences might be.  What, for
instance, would become of one's capacity for emotion? would it become
stultified through disuse, or sharpened through denial?  What would
become of one's power for thought?  Would that become blunted, in the
absence of any whetstone whereon to grind itself?  Or would a new, high
wisdom arise, out of an inhuman sense of proportion, accomplishing
nothing and desirous of no achievement, but attaining through
contemplation a serene and perfectly tolerant estimate of the frailties
of mankind?  For one would arrive at Qaleh Madrasseh, at the beginning
of the thirty years' seclusion, not as an Oriental mystic, having no
experience of the world of intellect, vanity, and science, but as a
fully equipped exile from a European state in the agonies of its
striving after civilisation.  Glutted and weary with information,
confused with creeds, the old words knocking against one another in the
brain and producing no more than a tinny clatter, one would settle down
either to a stagnant repose or else to a concentrated readjustment of
values.

[Illustration: ON THE ROAD]

The very idea of stagnant repose being execrable, one repudiates it
without further consideration.  Thus one is left exiled at Qaleh
Madrasseh with an army of facts waiting to be drilled into order.
Facts,--that incongruous assortment which accumulates,--snippets of
knowledge, fragments of observation, fleeting theories no sooner formed
than discarded, ideas as self-contradictory as proverbs--at last one
would have time to marshal all this into some sort of formation.  An
army indeed; and every unit as complicated as the soldier himself, as
intricate and capable of as many interpretations.  Personal conceit,
however, suggests that one would deal successfully with the matter; so
successfully that at the end of the thirty years one would emerge upon
the world crying with a voice as the voice of a prophet.

[Illustration: BAKHTIARI COUNTRY]

A whole flock of reflections arises, as suddenly as a flock of
starlings from the ground.  But although I should like to go into the
question of exactly what form one's proselytising would take--whether
he who had once had leisure to open his own mind would burn with the
desire that his fellows should do likewise; whether it would be, not
evil, but stupidity, that he would attack; reason, and not faith, that
he would demand,--I feel that this is no place in which to do it.  A
minor and more frivolous question comes uppermost: society.  Because,
of course, at Qaleh Madrasseh, society as we understand it would be
entirely absent; and society is the recreation upon which the enormous
majority of people depend.  Mankind is, in fact, gregarious.  Now the
craving for society takes many forms, from Mr. and Mrs. Humphrey
Turnbull, who, with Miss Aminta Turnbull, arrive at 157 Pont Street
(telephone Sloane 0673) at the most exquisite moment of the year "for
the season", down to Mrs. Godden, who, after she has given the potato
parings to the pig, goes to a whist-drive in the village.  The most
curious thing about all such activities is that the participants enter
into them as though at any moment something truly exciting were liable
to happen.  From the Turnbulls' point of view, this optimism is
justifiable: Aminta may meet an eligible young man who will marry her,
and a new household will be set up which will then start off revolving
in the approved cycle.  But this can only be said of anxious couples
with marriageable daughters.  It cannot be said of those who go yearly
through the same routine; and who would probably admit, were the habit
of hypocrisy not so firmly taught them from their youth upward, that
the dominant impression was one of boredom and monotony.  Conversation
is different, and the meeting together of intimate friends; but what
conversation does anyone get at a party?  And who would not rather meet
his intimate friends elsewhere?  The fact remains, that mankind is
gregarious.  Probably we do not realise to what an extent most of us
are dependent upon contact with our fellows; we do not realise it until
we contemplate in detail such a severance as would result from living
at Qaleh Madrasseh.  We are, in fact, seldom alone; even if we avoid
parties, we are probably in such constant contact with a little group
of familiars that it is difficult to disentangle their ideas from our
own.  We are, indeed, seldom alone.  We are a patchwork quilt of
colours.  The pressure of other minds is enough to pulverise our own.
Even if we are of a taciturn habit, the printed word still remains to
rape our singleness.

But at Qaleh Madrasseh?

What luxuries, what relaxations, would one allow oneself?  A yearly
post, including one copy of the _Times_?  The newsagent would obey
orders, but one's friends, would they write?  They might write in the
first year, even in the second, but after that?  One would, I fear,
soon become as unreal, as remote, as a distant catastrophe, and one's
image would evoke little more concern than an earthquake in Japan.  A
passing irritation, a flush of impatience at such extravagant
eccentricity,--idle to hope for more.  It would be, even with the best
will in the world, difficult to write to a person once a year; it is
easy enough to write every day, but in a yearly letter the writer would
feel, inevitably though mistakenly, that only dramatic and portentous
news was fit to put on paper.  The power of imagination would quickly
dwindle; no correspondent could reasonably be expected to realise the
drawing near of the awaited day, say the 23rd of September, or to
visualise the arrival of the messenger with his pouch.  He would be
late, probably; the post-cart would have dawdled on its way down to
Isfahan; his mule would have gone lame in the mountains; he himself
would have been prostrated with fever.  Day by day, for a week, for a
fortnight, after the appointed date, one would have gone down to the
Road, and with hand-shaded eyes stared at the track,--in vain.  The
23rd of September; it would be hot then in the Bakhtiari hills, the
tribes would still be up at Chahar Mahal; the long empty months of
summer would have dragged by; no one would be travelling the Road, so
that any figure sighted in the distance would be, could be, none other
than the awaited messenger.  Homesickness, absent from the eleven
uneventful months of the year, would rear its head, and with scorching
breath burn and devastate the savannahs of calm.  At length the
messenger would come,--but let us pursue the matter no further,--it is
too painful to contemplate,--or let each one fill in the story for
himself as he will.

A wireless set one might have, a super-set that would pick up London.
I remember that an Englishman condemned to live in a little malarial
town in Persia told me that he, having come into possession of such a
set, arranged with the only other Englishman living in the town to meet
and listen to Big Ben.  At one o'clock in the morning they sat
together, and listened to Big Ben striking ten.  They belonged to the
usual inarticulate type of Englishman, and it was in silence that they
parted, but with tears upon their cheeks.  I like to imagine that one
would sit alone at Qaleh Madrasseh, listening, as the dead might
listen, to London.  Then, I fancy, it would be one's childhood and
adolescence that one would try to revive.  Modernity would make no
appeal; the too obvious homesickness and sensuality of syncopation
would leave one unmoved.  Nothing but the eternally sublime or the
sentimental associations of vanished years would twang the chords of
the heart.  Beethoven's Symphonies and the Ode to the West Wind; Daisy,
Daisy, and the Bicycle made for Two; there would, I fancy, be no middle
stage.  And that, again, would be part of the ceaseless endeavour to
escape; as much a part of it as the voluntary exile to Qaleh Madrasseh.

Perhaps it would be better to go the whole hog and cut oneself off
entirely from the outside world.  A merely negative form of protest, I
fear, against conditions one does not like; for resentment is vain
unless one has an alternative to offer.  Flight is no alternative; it
is only a personal solution.  But as a personal experiment it certainly
offers material for reflection to the curious.

The story is told, indeed, of an Englishman who in the beginning of the
last century settled down among the Bakhtiari, took to himself a wife,
and spent many years living with the nomads under the name of Dervish
Ali.  But, "in process of time, having grown tired of savage life and
of his Bakhtiari bride, he sold her for a jackass, which he rode to
Trebizond, and embarked thence for his native country, having turned a
few shillings on the speculation".  This story, entertaining though it
is, does not get one very far, except perhaps as a proof that the
desire for escape will, after sufficient indulgence, be replaced by the
desire for return.[1]


[1] This story is given by Lady Sheil in her _Glimpses of Life and
Manners in Persia_.  She quotes extracts from the diary of Dervish Ali.
Query: can this diary still be in existence?




XVI

I observe, however, in some dismay, looking back over these pages, that
I have given an entirely wrong impression of the Bakhtiari mountains.
I have, unintentionally, represented them as over-built and populous; I
have mentioned villages; I have mentioned a merchant on his horse, a
man ploughing, the son of the Il-Khani, the keepers of a chai-khaneh.
All this, in the aggregate, must I fear have given the impression of a
walking-tour through some part of Europe, with never more than a few
niggardly miles intervening between one reminder of civilisation and
the next.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  By the very use of
the word village, with its associations in an English mind, I have
probably evoked a picture of something much larger, more orderly, and
more definite than is justified by the few poor hovels of Naghan or
Do-Pulan.  For the rest, our path lay along miles of country where not
so much as a mud hut was visible.  The merchant, the man ploughing,
were figures so isolated and so exceptional that I have recorded them
as it were greedily, for the sake of having something human to record.
They were--let me emphasise it--isolated instances; and, as such, they
made an impression on us which in the swarming countries to which we
Europeans are accustomed they would not have made.  No, the dominant
impression was one of isolation.  True, we were on the Road; we met an
occasional traveller; we met the migrating tribes; but we knew that to
the left hand or the right lay utter solitude; the solitude of nature,
which draws us and holds us with a primitive, an indefensible
attraction, all of us, however sophisticated we may be.  And it was a
double impression: of isolation and anachronism.  Not only had we gone
far away in distance; we had also gone far back in time.  We had
returned, in fact, to antiquity.  We were travelling as our ancestors
had travelled; not those immediate ancestors who rolled in their
coaches between London and Bath, or between Genoa and Rome; but as
Marco Polo had travelled, or Ovid going into exile, or the Ten Thousand
hoping for the sea.  We learnt what the past had been like; and what
the world had been like when it was still empty.  Time was held up and
values altered; a luxury which may be indulged to-day by anyone who
travels into the requisite parts of Asia.  More: we knew that had we
not elected to travel the Bakhtiari Road at that particular time of the
year we should not have met even the tribes, but should have had the
mountains all to ourselves, eccentric invaders of majestic desolation.
No merchant would have overtaken us beneath the oaks, no peasant
groaned behind his plough.  We should have topped the pass above Deh
Diz and seen not only the lonely range of the Kuh-i-Mangasht, but known
that in the whole of that valley no human being drew breath.  Those
whom we did meet were as transient as ourselves; the only permanence
was in the hills and in the rivers that coiled about their base.




XVII

Next day we were again in the thick of the tribes, riding up the long
wooded valley of Cheshmeh Khatoun, very much delayed by the press of
beasts and men, as the track here was extremely narrow.  The valley of
Cheshmeh Khatoun--the Lady's Fountain,--was very shady and beautiful,
but it was also sinister.  I have said little about the more violent
and sinister aspect of the road.  A lake of blood by the wayside was no
uncommon sight--though whether something had been born there, or
whether something had died there, it was impossible to determine.
Birth and death fell into much the same perspective: they were just
events, the one at the beginning and the other at the end of the same
journey.  It was curious to note how rapidly the sensibilities of
civilisation were modified, in this contact with life reduced to its
most elementary forms.  We grew so well accustomed to a blood-stained
track that we ceased to notice it; and a company of vultures circling
and swooping above some nauseating meal stirred us to no interest.
Nevertheless I remember still with a shiver of horror and pity the
sight of a child, in that very valley of Cheshmeh Khatoun, swaying on a
pony in front of its mother, its head broken open but unbandaged, its
teeth chattering with shock, and a frightened, half-sobbing whimper,--a
pitiful little morsel of humanity.  Wherever we stopped on the road the
sick came to us in a trustful way that made our ignorance a shame; for
consumption, ophthalmia, and syphilis were rife, and although in most
cases we realised that we could do nothing, we never had the heart to
say so, but used to distribute lint, lotions, and medicines which at
least we were sure could do no harm.  Perhaps the mere suggestion of a
cure, and the abracadabra with which we accompanied our distribution of
remedies,--even though it were but a pinch of permanganate of
potash,--had a salutary effect on those ignorant minds.  "You know you
can go to the hospitals of the Company", we said sometimes, "and
receive treatment."  But they shook their heads mournfully: the
treatment was good, they knew that, and the treatment was free, but the
Edareh--the Company--the great Anglo-Persian Oil Company--was down at
Masjid-i-Suleiman, many days' journey away.  So they took our little
packages reverently, as we ourselves might receive a ring from a
magician, and carried them off, cupped in their hands, like treasures.
We alone were left with the burden of the knowledge that it was no
infallible talisman we had given them.

[Illustration: NEAR CHESHMEH KHATOUN]

On our way up the Valley of the Lady's Fountain we met a most beautiful
girl, decked out in brilliant colours, leading her horse across a
stream.  She and her horse together looked so wild and beautiful, among
the rocks, with the water splashing round their feet and the sun
falling on them through the overhanging leaves, that I unhitched my
camera from the saddle of the Mouse and aimed it in their direction.
Whether the young woman thought it a weapon or an instrument of the
evil eye, I do not know; but she uttered a piercing scream, dropped the
bridle, and fled for her life up the path she had just come down.  Her
fellow-tribesmen tried to stop her by barring her passage, but she
broke through them all in her panic, and leaping up the rocks with
goat-like agility,--considering how she was encumbered by her very
voluminous clothes,--she came at last to bay, high up on the steep
bank, where she clung, gazing down on us in terror, while her fellows
roared with laughter and we tried to reassure her with apologetic
phrases.  Had she but known how beautiful she was, in her coloured
plumage, poised as for further flight, her great dark eyes wide with
panic, clinging to the rock beside which she had taken refuge, she
surely could not have grudged me a whole film of photographs.  As it
was, I abandoned the attempt, showing her clearly that I was restoring
the camera to its case on the Mouse's saddle, but as we rode on up the
valley and looked back we saw that she had not yet ventured down from
her retreat.

[Illustration: NEAR CHESHMEH KHATOUN]

From time to time, riding up this valley, as elsewhere, we came upon
stretches of cobbled road.  The track would suddenly cease to be a mere
beaten way, coiling between the boulders, and would rise for perhaps
fifty or a hundred yards in wide shallow steps of hewn stone.  The
mules took it with relief, and we realised that their hoofs were
clicking, as they climbed, on no less a causeway than the famous Jeddai
Atabeg, the great artery which in the days of the Sassanian dynasty led
from the plains of Susiana to Persepolis.  The squalor of the tribes
was suddenly overshadowed by the might of those tremendous names.
Worn, discontinuous as they were, those patches of pavement still
represented the reckless and brutal energy which drove a road across
the mountains.  What hands had laid them there?  The Lurs attribute
them to the Atabegs, the former rulers of Luristan, but Layard carries
the road back to the time of the Kayanian Kings, and Lord Curzon refers
it to Sassanian or even Achaemanian times.  De Bode, who rode up from
Malamir as far as Qaleh Madrasseh, tries to identify the Jeddai Atabeg
with the Climax Megale or Great Ladder discovered in the mountains by
the soldiers of Alexander, and quotes Diodorus Siculus and Pliny to
prove his point: "In a province of the interior," says Pliny, "towards
Media, is a place known by a Greek name, Climax Megale, which is
ascended with difficulty and by means of steps, up a steep mountain
leading to a narrow opening through which Persepolis may be reached,
the capital of the kingdom destroyed by Alexander."  Whether de Bode
was right or wrong--and I believe that he is generally assumed to have
been wrong--mattered little to me who am no antiquarian.  What mattered
to me was the evidence, the survival of a grand civilisation pushing
its way up into the mountains of Luristan.  Communication must be
established between Susa and Persepolis; a range of mountains
intervened; no matter,--let a road be made across the mountains.  The
road, one might fancy, was made by men who in their outward appearance
as in their mental condition differed very little from the men who were
passing us now in their unending streams.  But among them stood the
terrible ghosts of Shahpur and Ardeshir, Darius and Alexander.

At the head of the valley after the Sarrak Pass, we came suddenly out
on to a wide plain.  This was much more like the Persia we knew, unlike
the Bakhtiari country, which had a character quite its own.  Away from
the woods, away from the hills, escaped suddenly from the valleys, we
felt that we breathed once more a larger air.  For almost the first
time, too, since we had left Shalamzar, our feet were on something
flat.  The relief was greater than I could have believed.  I realised
then with what yearning and affection I had been thinking of smooth,
level places such as station platforms or London pavements, while the
muscles of thighs and calves ached with the perpetual effort of going
up or down hill, over rocky ground where every step threatened to
sprain an ankle; I realised then how gladly I would have given my soul
for a stretch of concrete, as gladly as the traveller lost in the
desert would give his soul for a drink of water.  The plain was smudged
with flocks, and peppered with little mauve irises.  A few miles in
that fresh, clear air brought us to the edge of the plateau, from where
we looked down upon the wide and lovely plain of Malamir.  The plain of
Malamir is the great gathering-place of the Chahar Lang division of the
tribes before they move off on their march.  Among the patches of
flocks which we could see moving below us were many black tents; and
the dome of a shrine, round and white in the sun.  We had a long
zig-zagging descent before we reached the lower level.  It was very
green and warm down in the plain.  Corn was growing, and camels were
grazing; we had not seen a camel since Shalamzar, so now, looking at
the long-legged camel foals, straddling and spider-like, we deluded
ourselves with the idea that we were out of the true Bakhtiari country
for good and all, and might now look forward to the level travelling
across plain after plain that we had learnt to expect from Persia.  We
looked back at the snow mountains, could scarcely believe that we had
crossed them, and went forward, the mules stepping sedate and pleased
on the short grass.

[Illustration: THE PLAIN OF MALAMAR]

But it was not only the true Persia that we had seen again as we stood
overlooking the plain of Malamir.  In the far, far distance, beyond the
hills, a dark plume of smoke rose straight into the sky.  Taha, reining
up his horse, pointed to it as the Israelites to the Promised Land.
"Edareh!  Edareh!" he exclaimed with almost religious fervour.
Edareh--the Company,--the smoke of the oil-fields--civilisation.  A
wave of regret swept over me; I forgot the exhaustion of our toiling
days; I would have turned back then and there to plunge into the
mountains again and be lost for ever.

The village of Malamir lay on the other side of the plain, a squalid
collection of mud houses with wattled roofs, goats and dogs lying about
everywhere in the sun of the main street.  Here we stopped to eat a
bowl of _mast_, and here it was that I had my second photographic
misadventure.  It was really very unlucky that I should have had two
such misadventures in one day, for, as a rule, the Persians enjoy being
photographed, and crowd eagerly, often too eagerly, round a camera.

It was at the end of the street that I came across the dervish.  Harold
Nicolson and I were strolling alone, the rest of the caravan having
gone on in advance.  He was a particularly handsome dervish, dressed in
a flowing robe of sapphire blue, his heavy black curls descending to
his shoulders, and he was mounted bareback on a young chestnut
stallion.  Riding as he was with the grey amphitheatre of mountains for
a background, he presented an exceedingly noble appearance.  Mindful,
however, of the girl in the valley, I called out to him first to ask if
I might take his photograph.  He was delighted.  He pulled up his
horse, sat very erect, and re-arranged his blue robe to show it off at
its best possible advantage.  I, for my part, put down the camera on
the ground, and began to step the distance for the focus.  Stepping
distance for a focus, as all photographers know, entails taking large
steps which will measure a yard each.  As I drew near to the dervish,
who was already preening himself and affectionately fingering his
cavalier love-locks, his young horse, alarmed at my menacing stride,
took fright, and after one tremendous plunge which unseated his rider,
made off at full gallop, snorting and throwing up clods of turf across
the plain.  The dervish lay on the ground, his turban in the dust, and
his beautiful blue robe billowing round him.  As he was an elderly man
and had come a heavy cropper, and was now groaning aloud, we rushed up
to his prostrate figure, fearing not only that he had broken his limbs
but that we ourselves were in immediate danger of being lynched by the
villagers.  Harold Nicolson especially, who had an ineradicable though
demonstrably mistaken view that Persians resented being photographed,
was now almost triumphant because, as he thought, my obstinacy was to
prove the cause of our being both torn limb from limb.  The Persians,
however, are a humorous people, to whom the spectacle of a man falling
down is quite as funny as to anybody else, and the Bakhtiari, moreover,
are apt to think of a man in terms of his horsemanship.  Instead of
being indignant with the foreigner for thus abasing a holy man, they
burst into fits of derisive laughter against the holy man for allowing
himself to be unseated from his horse.  Some of them set out in
good-natured pursuit of the horse, now a mere speck careering across
the plain; others propped up the dervish, who with great presence of
mind in the midst of his groans had summed up the situation, and was
demanding damages for three broken fingers.  It seemed cheap at the
price.  Harold Nicolson, relieved to escape so lightly, turned out his
trouser pockets and with a handful of _krans_ and _shai_ made up a sum
of one _toman_--four shillings.  This was taken in charge by the
friendly villagers, who with broad grins assured us that the dervish
had only suffered a shaking; and leaving the sapphire-blue figure still
rolling in the dust, we made off in the direction of the distant
caravanserai.

We walked on across the plain, emancipated for the first time from the
irksome solicitude of Taha or Hossein, and as we walked, Harold
Nicolson discoursed hotly on the iniquity of disregarding the
prejudices of people in their own country.  Abashed by the incident of
the dervish, I refrained from pointing out that it was not the holy man
but his horse who had objected to my camera.  A couple of Bakhtiari,
passing us at a wild gallop, put an end to our dispute, and we walked
on with friendliness restored, as indeed it could not fail to be in the
heart of the warm exquisite evening which was sinking down on us.  Even
in Persia, I had seldom seen the landscape dyed to more beautiful and
subtle colours in the light of the setting sun.  The great grey cliffs
of rocky strata flushed to rose and lavender, with deep blue shadows in
their clefts; a serene immensity seemed to pervade the world, and
everything to be at peace.

[Illustration: THE MAIN STREET, MALAMIR]




XVIII

A disagreement arose next morning between us and our muleteers.  From
notes which we had accumulated from other travellers we had decided to
make for a place called Murdafil.  The muleteers, however, denied the
existence of any such place, and declared, moreover, that we should
find no water except at the place they wished to go to, called Agha
Mihrab.  Gladwyn Jebb, who managed all that part of the expedition with
a calm and haughty efficiency, would have nothing to do with their
arguments.  To Murdafil we intended to go, and to Murdafil consequently
we were going.  We set off from Malamir on a hot morning, through
rolling country where the vegetation was far richer and more
interesting than it had been in the hills.  Orchises, iris, anemones,
borage, convolvulus, Star of Bethlehem, gladiolus, eremurus grew
everywhere in great profusion; and on a slope I found to my joy the
little scarlet tulip for which I had looked in vain in other parts of
Persia.  The white, starry tulip, and the yellow tulip had been common,
but so far the scarlet one had eluded me.  There it was, blood-red in
the sun, and I took the bulbs, and stuck the flowers into the harness
of the patient Mouse.

As we drew near to the end of our day's march, wondering whether we
should indeed find Murdafil or whether we should be compelled to camp
in some waterless place, and own ourselves defeated, we came to a
sloping valley down which rushed a stream overhung by oleanders and
pampas grass.  The whole character of the country had altered, and by
nothing was it so well indicated as by this complete change in the
vegetation, so rich and green that we might almost imagine ourselves in
the tropics after the severe aridity we had hitherto associated with
Persia.  Just above the stream we presently descried the ruins of some
small building, where we decided to camp for the night; yes, said the
muleteers with smug satisfaction, this was Agha Mihrab, the site they
had recommended.  We gave up Murdafil with as good a grace as possible,
though we were sure they had deliberately and obstinately misled us.
There was certainly nothing to complain of in the site: the ruins were
raised up on a little natural terrace, in the midst of what had once
been a garden, for some old, unpruned rose bushes grew rampant, and
down in a dip grew a grove of dark myrtle.  Wandering off while the
monotonous process of unpacking began, we came on a waterfall that
splashed down over a high wall of rock, and here we found a goatherd
piping to his goats.  What was the name of the ruined caravanserai we
had passed some way down the road? we asked him, and received the
reply, Murdafil.  We were amused rather than irritated by this
characteristic example of the working of the Persian mind; for the
muleteers must have known perfectly well that we should find them out
in their lie, and that we should establish not only the existence of a
place called Murdafil, but also the fact that it lay by a stream of
clear mountain water.  But when we taxed them with the lie, they only
put on a blank expression and shrugged their shoulders.

It was very warm and peaceful at Agha Mihrab.  I remember the place
with affection and gratitude, as one of those memories which nothing
can take away.  The note of the goatherd's reedy flute rose above the
sound of the waterfall, and mingled with the other sounds of night: the
snap of a burnt stick, the tinkle of a mule's bell, the croaking of a
thousand frogs down by the stream.  We had been sitting in silence
round the fire, smoking, while Venus travelled slowly across the sky
and now was about to dip behind the hill.  I knew that by climbing the
hill opposite I could still see Venus for a little longer, in all the
splendour of the clear, black night.  But I was too tired.  Better to
let the day go out quietly, when Venus was thus silently extinguished;
better to let it go out on the note of the flute, as the red fires
burnt low in the valley, and the nomads wrapped themselves in their
cloaks and slept.




XIX

"Let us consider, then, what kind of life will be led by the persons
thus provided.  I presume they will produce corn and wine and clothes
and shoes, and build themselves houses; and in summer, no doubt, they
will generally work without their coats and shoes, while in winter they
will be suitably clothed and shod.  And they will live, I suppose, on
barley and wheat, baking cakes of the meal and kneading loaves of the
flour.  And spreading these excellent cakes and loaves upon mats of
straw or on clean leaves, and themselves reclining on rude beds of yew
or myrtle boughs, they will make merry, themselves and their children,
drinking their wine, wearing their garlands, and singing the praises of
the gods, enjoying one another's society, and not begetting children
beyond their means, through a prudent fear of poverty or war....  And
thus passing their days in tranquillity and sound health, they will, in
all probability, live to an advanced age and, dying, bequeath to their
children a life in which their own will be reproduced.

"Upon this Glaucon exclaimed, Why, Socrates, if you were founding a
community of swine, this is just the style in which you would feed them
up!"


To-morrow, then, was to be our last day of walking? for we knew that
the black plume of smoke, although we could not now see it, shut in by
the valley as we were, must be drawing ominously nearer.  The soft
peace of Agha Mihrab made for meditation.  Crossing the mountains had
been no ordinary or light experience, but it was not enough to record
the grandeur of the peaks or even the passing of the tribes: what else
had emerged?  It was of Persia that I found myself thinking; not, for
once, of Persia in her natural beauty, but of Persia as the ideal
state, of the opportunities of a wise and idealistic dictator.  Would
it not be possible for this vast, majestic, and under-populated country
to shut itself off from the miseries of the world, and, self-contained,
to concentrate solely upon the well-being of its own inhabitants?  That
would indeed be a new venture in government, a bold and revolutionary
programme, which, like all innovations, would call down upon the head
of its inaugurator the bitterest gibes and accusations.  "A reactionary
Shah", one can see the headlines.  A triumvirate of Christ, Napoleon,
and Florence Nightingale would not be too much for the task.  But
consider: is the idea really so Utopian?  It is first of all essential
to turn all our ideas topsy-turvy, to discard the principle that
excessive wealth, complicated politics, and facility of movement are
necessary to human happiness, and to exchange for those three fallacies
the ambition of securing Health, Sufficiency, and Security for all.
Geographically speaking, Persia is not badly situated for a policy of
isolation.  In its present railwayless condition, when all journeying
must be accomplished by road, it is for all practical purposes apt to
become inaccessible during the winter months, when the passes are
blocked by snow, and no one knows what delays and even dangers may not
attend the caravan or the motor convoy.  This, save in so far as it
inconveniences the traveller and may, more seriously, threaten the
north of Persia with famine, matters very little, for Persia does not
lie upon the road to any active or important centre,--nothing but the
darkness of Central Asia stretches beyond it;--consequently the problem
of transport becomes merely an internal problem, and one which in the
complete absence of mechanical facilities is not likely to concern the
outer world.  It is only when Persia talks of building railways that
Russia and Great Britain begin to take an interest.  But it will be
objected that a sentence or two back occurred the ominous words,
"threaten with famine": that, surely, puts upon the question of
transport a different complexion?  And what about trade?

First as to famine,--for it is idle to make Utopian suggestions unless
they can be supported in a practical way.  There is no reason why
enough crops should not be grown in Persia to supply the whole of the
population, if all towns and villages lay in the midst of their own
circle of cultivation,--as, to a very large extent, they already do: I
quote the highest authority in defence of this contention, the late
Administrator-General of Persian finance: "In the areas actually under
cultivation at present, production can probably, by obvious and
practicable measures, be increased sufficiently to support a population
two or three times as great as the present population of the country."
The great difficulty at present is the inadequacy of the irrigation;
but, although immense tracts of stony and waterless desert stretch
between village and village, Persia is by no means a waterless country:
the majority of villages are built beside a stream, and moreover water
is brought by underground canals from the inexhaustible supply on the
mountains, a system of canalisation which, if simplified and extended,
could turn each oasis of agriculture into a patch as fertile as the
valley of the Nile.  As for the meat supply, I have already mentioned
the words sheep, goat, and cow so often and so inevitably in these
pages that I shall not here insist upon the riches of the pastoral
tribes.  Which reminds me of the comment of a lady in London sitting
behind me at a film taken in Southern Persia.  Rugged mountains, sunlit
plains, and other beauties of nature on a majestic scale had been
displayed before her without arousing any audible response.  It was
only when she saw a flock of sheep crawling across a plain that she
spoke.  "Lovely mutton", she murmured wistfully, "they must have there."

And what about trade?  As half the revenue of the country derives from
the customs tariff, it is obvious that Persian trade cannot afford to
drop below its present figure.  Even an ideal state needs a
sufficiently furnished purse.  Countries are not run upon
loving-kindness.  But, again discarding conventional and accepted
ideas, is there any reason for desiring an increase of commerce?
Persia can produce nearly everything she requires for herself, with the
exception, of course, of manufactured articles; she is one of the few
countries in the world which, owing partly to the simplicity of her
needs, can aspire to be self-sufficing.  Those who would Westernise
Persia naturally take the desirability of factories and machinery for
granted, but such an ambition is the negation of everything that this
particular ideal state stands for.  Granted, says the economist; but
money, money is needed nevertheless for the agricultural expansion you
have already suggested, and for the various reforms which you are
surely about to suggest?  I reply that if internal taxation were
reorganised and honestly controlled, and trade maintained in its
present condition, enough for all my reforms would be forthcoming.

The transport question, then, which occupies so much attention, becomes
less weighty if the first principle of my scheme--isolation--be
adopted.  It reduces itself almost entirely to a question of
communications within the country, and for that a solution might be
found in two ways: a light goods railway running from, say, Teheran to
Bushire, with branches to serve such towns as Yezd and Kirman (Isfahan
and Shiraz of course would be served by the main line), or by an
organised system of motor-lorries,--these to be merely an amplification
of the post-cart system in use already.  For I am not so reactionary as
to deny that it is more convenient to send a bale of goods by motor
than on the back of a camel, or for a man to travel in the same way.
On the whole, I incline to the lorries, for the railway might prove to
be the thin end of the wedge, and I would risk no wedges driven into
the walls of my ideal state.  The lorries also would be cheaper to
establish, and cheaper to maintain.  I sat at Agha Mihrab visualising a
blue lorry, ornamented with the Lion and the Sun, drawing up before the
mud walls of Dilijan, while plump and clean villagers came out to crowd
round it.

[Illustration: ON THE PLAIN OF MALAMIR]

But before my villagers could be fattened up and washed, drastic
alterations would have to take place in the internal administration.
That Augean stable must have, not an irrigation canal, but a cataract
poured through it, and over this task our imaginary Shah would be lucky
if he escaped with his life.  Tradition, national character, and, in
Persia, the priests, are stubborn foes to contend with.  Many
oppressive systems would have to be swept away,--I spare you the
details,--and justice and integrity established in their place.  Easily
said!

Let us assume, however, that this is accomplished, and that we are now
presented with a Persia sufficiently and scientifically cultivated,
adequately linked together in the matter of internal communications,
reasonably taxed, and justly administered.  (Smile, you who know
Persia!)  The wisdom of Christ and the determination of Napoleon have
done their work; now it is time for Florence Nightingale.  It is idle
to feed those peasants or to enable them to travel to the next village
if they are riddled with disease.  And disease, in that high clean
air,--no overcrowding, no factory towns, very little chance or danger
of contamination from outside,--should be almost as easy to control in
Persia as rabies in England.  Why, even the Miana bug might be dealt
with.  Two things of course are at the root of it all, two things
almost (but not quite) as hard to overcome as corruption and the
priesthood: dirt and ignorance.

Here, again, national character blocks the way.  Call it ignorance,
fatalism, or apathy, still the effect is the same.  There is a passage
in Gertrude Bell's _Persian Pictures_ which I shall quote in
illustration, since her authority is higher than mine.  Cholera was
approaching Teheran with rapid strides, "yet, with the cholera knocking
at their doors, they made no preparations for defence, they organised
no hospitals, they planned no system of relief; cartloads of over-ripe
fruit were still permitted to be brought daily into the town, and the
air was still poisoned by the refuse which was left to rot in the
streets....  Another disease follows on the heels of cholera: typhoid
fever is the inevitable result of an absolute disregard of all sanitary
laws.  The system of burial among the Persians is beyond expression
evil.  They think nothing of washing the bodies of the dead in a stream
which subsequently runs the length of the village, thereby poisoning
water which is to be used for numberless household purposes, and in
their selection of the graveyard they will not hesitate to choose the
ground lying immediately above a _kanat_ which is carrying water to
many gardens and drinking fountains."

There is no need to insist on the truth or fidelity of this quotation,
or to remind travellers of the sights they have seen in Eastern
countries--the eyes clotted with flies, the festering sores, the
swaddled limbs of babies, the evidence of smallpox and worse diseases,
the coma produced by opium--all these things are such commonplaces that
one almost ceases to observe them.  But in my ideal Persia they must
become a matter, if necessary, for military law.  As a matter of fact,
I believe that the village dispensary, controlled by a doctor or
trained nurse, would be everywhere welcomed and not resisted, judging
by the way the peasants throng round the foreigner, asking for
remedies; and judging also by the docility with which, according to
travellers such as Mrs. Bishop, instructions are received.  (Here is a
vocation, I suggest, open to many of our superfluous spinsters.)  The
unfortunate Persian peasant, miles from any hospital or doctor, is only
too eager to be cured; otherwise he knows that there is no hope for him
but to have his nostrils stuffed with herb-paste as he lies dying.  But
his faith is childlike and unbounded; he will expect a cure for
blindness from birth, just as his wives will expect a miraculous
love-philtre: all foreigners are doctors, and all doctors are
omnipotent.  With such material to work upon, and the climate as an
ally, the difficulty should not be too great.

The structure grows: in an isolated, justly administered Persia, we
establish a population composed, so far as is humanly possible, of
healthy-bodied men.  Still, they are ignorant.  It is true that they no
longer wash their dead in the streams that presently will fill their
drinking-cups; they no longer imprison their young in swaddling bands
that during the course of weeks and even months will receive all the
excreta of the body; they no longer drink water which has absorbed a
verse of the Koran as a cure for malaria; but it is through fear of the
law that they refrain from doing these things, and not through any
understanding in their own minds.  They may do what they are told to
do--but they have not the most elementary idea of why they do it.  The
question of education rears its controversial head.  Is education to be
attempted in this ideal State, or is it not?  I think not.  We in
Europe are in a different position; we cannot, and would not, arrest a
system which has already been set working, and our only aim should be
to carry it forward to a greater and even greater perfection.  In
Persia--though in the cities there are schools[1]--the wheels have not
yet begun to revolve so quickly that we could not bring them to a
standstill by a touch of the hand.  In education there should be no
half-measures: either let it be complete, or let it be _nil_.  Or let
it be both; but complete in the one category, _nil_ in the other.  This
gives rise to two instant objections: that one category includes all
the rich, the other all the poor; and that potential intelligence among
the poor will be lost owing to lack of opportunity.  I confess that I
cannot see how this last objection--the more important of the two--is
to be overcome, unless we are to adapt Plato's system of guardians; but
not quite in the sense that Plato meant it, for he was talking of
soldiers--strong, swift, and brave; high-spirited but gentle; and
endowed with a taste for philosophy, a kind of overseers of the
intelligence on the look-out for natural genius, hard to imagine in a
Persian village.  It seems that we must take the risk, and let the
tillers of the soil merely till the soil, without mixing themselves up
in speculations dangerous to the half-trained mind.  An anti-democratic
creed, but the only possible one in dealing with a primitive community.
Men do not miss what they Have never known, and if we, the more
enlightened, confer upon them, in the first instance, practical
advantages which will bear fruit only in the second or third
generation, and let education wait, they have no business to complain.
Moreover, the nature of the Persian peasant is, in this, on our side,
for he is, to start with, of a contented disposition.  "The
inhabitants" (of a village near Isfahan), says an American cadastral
report, "are penurious, credulous, and satisfied."  And again, "There
is little crime or disorder."  Whether it is humanly justifiable to
take advantage of another man's simplicity and docility, and to keep
him in a benighted condition because he is thereby more easily managed,
is a question entirely for the conscience.  My own view is, that it is
justifiable, provided that those set in authority over him are truly
sagacious and trustworthy--a large provision, I admit.  Then finance,
after all--for this ideal State is erected on a practical
foundation--must be considered; and the drain upon our exchequer is
already lavish.  But even apart from finance, and assuming that our
ideal State is furnished with an ideal gold mine, education can wait,
or even be put aside altogether.  So we get government of the ignorant
by the enlightened, with the line between the two sharply drawn.  We
get an agricultural and pastoral nation, almost entirely excluded from
the outside world; a Paradise of six hundred thousand square miles with
a population of ten millions, unique upon the face of the earth.


[1] In 1925, 91,190 students of both sexes were enrolled in the
schools, of which 22,660 were in Teheran.


[Illustration: FIRST SIGHT OF THE OIL-FIELDS]

Ay me, I fondly dream.  So strange a thicket has grown up round men's
minds that the view over the sane and sunlit plains is obscured.
Progress has come to be accepted as desirable, but any estimate of what
progress really means is left entirely out of the reckoning.  The
acquisition of wealth, the spirit of competition, the desire for
domination--to such idols do we sacrifice our souls.  "Why, when God's
earth is so wide," said Jalaluddin Rumi, "have you fallen asleep in a
prison?  Avoid entangled thoughts, that you may see the explanation in
Paradise."

[Illustration: NOMAD TENTS ON THE PLAIN OF GURGHIR]




XX

Our last day.  It set off with a flourish, up the Murdafil valley,
rocky, and rich with oleander and pomegranate, but presently we came
down into more nondescript country, where the smell of sulphur filled
the air, and where we had to ford the same river, the Tembih, at least
ten times.  It was very hot--almost too hot--our hands by the end of
the day were as brown as our shoes; the mules splashed gratefully
through the water.  We travelled with the whole caravan, contrary to
our custom, for the way was tricky to find, and in this open, grassy
country, the track had ceased to exist.  We were travelling round the
flank of the great grey Asmari mountain which lay like a stranded whale
on our left.  The hot sun and the level easiness of the going made us
all rather listless; the mules jangled their bells fretfully, and
continually flicked at the flies with their ears and tails; ahead of us
the black plume of smoke rose unwavering into the sky; we felt that all
our interest had been left in those hills and valleys which had closed
up for ever behind us, inviolate now save for the crawling stream of
the tribes, as indigenous and as inevitable as the eagles and the ibex.
Still, one must admit that the full caravan made a pretty sight,
whether the pack mules ranged out freely over the grass, or strung
themselves in a file to wade through the bright, shallow river.  It
made me tired to think that those mules, arrived at the oil-fields,
would load up with petrol, and turning round, set off again on the same
weary way, back to Isfahan, up and down the Road, till they dropped and
were eaten by the vultures.

[Illustration: BAKHTIARI CROSSING THE KAROUN]

That last day's stage was shorter than usual, and by four o'clock we
were encamped for the last time.  We had hated our tents, Heaven knows,
when the floor had been muddy and the nights cold, but now at Gurghir,
where it was warm and dry, on the grassy plain, we were overcome by a
sentimental regret.  It was now that Copley Amory produced the surprise
which he had been saving up in secret in that inexhaustible wooden box
of his: a bottle of champagne.  The champagne was quite warm, and we
had no ice; nor did a single bottle admit of a very generous allowance
among five people; but we had touched no wine since our Jeroboam
smashed at Do-Pulan, and that single, tepid, jealously measured draught
put a livelier spirit into us than all the poured-out sparkle in
London.  All honour to Copley Amory and his kind heart.  Throughout the
journey he had hovered, tactful, sympathetic, and unobtrusive.  When we
had seen him, deep in his confabulations with Rahim, we had been forced
to smile, whatever our state of irritability.  We had smiled again
whenever we saw him riding along, notebook in hand--what was he writing
in that notebook?--reins hanging loose, oblivious to ascent or descent,
a flower stuck in his hat, his gaunt red mule doing the work for him,
his legs dangling, having lost the stirrup; half Don Quixote, half
Canterbury Pilgrim.  He had said very little, but he had imposed good
humour on the party.  And now he crowned it all with a bottle of
champagne.

We drank it hilariously, on the plain of Gurghir, keeping meanwhile a
rather nervous eye on the much-ornamented camp which stood on a rise
just above our own camp.  This, we knew, had been prepared for Sardar
Zaffar, the Il-Khani, who had been the guest of the Company at the
oil-fields, and whose arrival was expected at any moment.  We had
groaned inwardly when we saw his tents, for we knew that meant a
_pasirayi_, but some slight hope remained that it might be deferred
until the following morning.  Presently, however, we saw the distant
beam of headlights sweep over the darkening plain: the Il-Khani was
arriving in the motors of the Company.  Civilisation and the wild were
meeting.  We had almost forgotten that motors existed, but here they
were, transporting the all but royal chief of the nomad tribes.  We
watched him walk from the cars to his camp, a dumpy round figure in the
white _kolah_ of the Bakhtiari and a biscuit-coloured robe, followed by
a trail of officers, servants, and guards armed with rifles.  We saw
the procession go up the rise and enter the camp.

We had tidied ourselves as well as we could, in expectation of the
inevitable summons, which was quickly brought by a dapper little
Persian officer.  Would we do the Il-Khani the honour of a visit?  We
accordingly followed the officer, jumping the stream which divided the
Il-Khani's camp from ours, and after climbing the knoll found Sardar
Zaffar capaciously seated on a very small chair in the midst of his
attendants.  Two slender Bakhtiari guards stood behind him, leaning on
their rifles; a group of white-robed Bakhtiari lounged near by, holding
their horses, illuminated by the flaring torches.  Down in the dip the
head-lights of the cars streamed out over the plain.  This was truly
Persia,--this mixture of the modern and the romantic.

The Il-Khani was extremely gracious.  We were able to tell him that we
had met his son, and as my memory revived of that gallant figure
reining up his horse I wondered what precise spot in the mountains saw
him that night, beyond Shalil, beyond Do-Pulan?  The Il-Khani sighed
over Persian politics as he drank his tea and knocked the ash off his
cigarette.  The little officer who had come to fetch us was very eager
to display his English.  The lounging Bakhtiari watched us with a kind
of inquisitive contempt in their fine dark eyes.  Night fell, complete;
and more candles were brought, and more tea in glasses.  We said at
last that we were tired, and begged now to be excused.  The Il-Khani
offered me the string of corals with which he was playing, slipping the
beads between his fingers as he talked, as all Persians do; it lies on
my table as I write.

After we had got back to our camp he sent us presents out of his store:
tinned peaches and tinned asparagus.  Our table looked like the counter
of an English grocer under the stars of Gurghir.

[Illustration: A GOAT-SKIN RAFT, REVERSED]




XXI

We were greeted next morning by the familiar sight of the mules
standing ready to be loaded, tossing their bells and flicking at the
flies, but for us there was no more trekking with the caravan.  The
Mouse looked at me reproachfully as she stood waiting with my saddle on
her back, and the orange saddle-cloth, and my blue-and-white saddle-bag
slung across her rump; or I imagined that she did, but perhaps she was
really glad to get rid of me and to return into the keeping of Hossein.
The caravan was to go by road, but we five were to go in two of the
motors which had brought the Il-Khani.  Black tents sprinkled the
plain,--the last that we were to see of the nomads.  It was
civilisation in the most violent contrast that lay ahead.

The black plume of smoke that we had seen from above Malamir had by now
reproduced itself in many smaller plumes which hung threatening in the
sky.  For some way we travelled over the grass, bumping and bouncing
till our heads hit the hoods and the springs grated with every jerk of
the motor.  But we were coming to the edge of the plain, and as the
foothills began to rise we found ourselves in a most extraordinary
landscape; the landscape characteristic, as we were to learn, of the
oil-fields.  We crept between hills comparable only to the cardboard
hills of a scenic railway, creased, bleached, altogether fantastic.
Still, there was no evidence of man's occupation, save in the hanging
feathers of smoke.  We might have been in some strange forsaken part of
the world, breaking our way through a pathless region.

Pathless region!  What is this?  A tarred road!

The tyres of the motor ran suddenly and smoothly on a perfect surface.
An English highway.  What lay at the end of it?  York?  Cambridge?  No,
Sheffield rather; look at the smoke trailing out across the sky.  An
English highway, leading, so it seemed, straight into hell.  A perfect
motor road, running between those strange crumpled hillocks.

We came to a tent, with white rough-cast gatch floor, and the
inevitable, pathetic, English attempt at a garden round it.  We went
in: a man's sitting-room; the _Royal Magazine_; pipes; P. G. Wodehouse;
and, most startling sight of all, a telephone.  No sign of the owner.
Harold Nicolson picked up the receiver, and a prompt voice said,
"Number, please."  A cross-connection cut in; he heard a man's voice
saying irritably, "I can't think where they've got to; they were due
to-day; Balfour has been out scouring the country for them all
morning."  "Hallo.  This is Nicolson speaking....  I've forgotten", he
said, turning to us, "how to use the telephone."

[Illustration: A GENERAL VIEW OF THE OIL-FIELDS]




XXII

But we were very definitely in the world of the telephone,--very
definitely, and with staggering suddenness, in the world of every
mechanical invention.  To those who arrive at the oil-fields in the
ordinary way, coming up from the tankers and gasometers of Abadan,
there is, no doubt, nothing very surprising in this perfectly
organised, clanking, belching settlement; but we had come straight out
of the wilds into a circle dependent entirely upon the horrible
resources of modern ingenuity.  The contrast was so great as to produce
an almost physical shock.  Those days in the mountains had stretched
themselves out into a complete lifetime,--twelve days? twelve years,
rather;--the mind had adapted itself to those conditions; now it had to
be slewed round in the space of half an hour; it had to readjust
itself, to remember all the forgotten lessons, to take again for
granted all the standards against which it had, with relief, rebelled.
From constant contact with life reduced to its simplest elements, we
walked straight into a hell of civilisation.  Nothing was lacking, as
we were to learn, from blast furnaces down to lathes adjusted to the
fraction of an inch.  Here, you could get a boiler made or your
spectacles repaired.  You could plunge a drill for a mile down into the
soil of Persia.  Rocks were ground to powder, and ranged in little
glass phials.  There were grocers' shops with the familiar tins and
bottles on the counters; there were schools, and cool, organised
hospitals; there were tennis-courts occupied by young women in summer
dresses and young men in white flannels.  There was, no doubt, society,
intrigues, and gossip.  One shuddered at the thought of it.  A heavy
smell of gas pervaded everything; at certain points along the road
barriers were erected, where all matches were taken away, to be
restored further on; the traffic was controlled by police in white
ducks; buses ran; the black tarred roads swept up and down in
switchback between white bungalows.  The roads swept up and down,--for
this colony lay, not in the English midlands, but plumped down amongst
the fantastic, the almost grotesque, scenery of the Persian oil-fields.
To give any idea, in words, of this landscape is extremely difficult.
The hills were not high, but so curiously crinkled, and of so strange a
colour, now brown, now green, that in their singularity they might well
have been upon another planet.  Like the cardboard hills of a scenic
railway to which I have already compared them--and find myself coming
back to the comparison for want of a better--they also resembled the
hills on a raised physical map; miniature ranges, with the creases
disproportionately noticeable.  Left to itself, the landscape would
have been queer enough; but with the introduction of mechanical
structures it turned into a nightmare world.  Huge skeletons, looking
like a schoolboy's model made out of Meccano, reared themselves in
unexpected places; and a large initial letter in black paint on white
indicated the well.  You remember the hundreds of tins of petrol which
you have seen or used in England, those tins with their screw-caps so
awkward to open unless you have a second tin to do it with, and you
prepare with some interest to see your old friend petrol in its natural
state.  B.P.; Palm Oil; the familiar signs return to your memory.  But
you will be disappointed.  More than a hundred wells are working over
an area of fifty square miles, producing their four and a half million
tons of oil a year; but of the oil itself one sees never a drop.
Secrecy seems to attend the mysterious business of dragging it up from
its lair; one sees the head of the well, one hears the murmur of
voices, but of the results one sees nothing at all.  The conduits are
closed and sealed.  In a great pipeline that writhes over the strange
hills, and down into the corn-clad plains of Arabistan, the glutinous
treasure of Maidan-i-Naftun is carried away to Abadan and the sea.

[Illustration: THE KAROUN AT GODAR LANDAR]

There are other wells in process of construction.  Down
there,--sometimes even a mile down,--the nose of the drill probes and
bores in a conflict never beheld by mortal eyes.  A narrow, pointed
enemy, the drill pierces its way inch by inch through the buried rock,
and the only visible result of its subterranean operations comes to the
surface in a constant stream of dirty water and occasionally a few
specimen chips of stone; only a stream of dirty water and a handful of
chips to indicate the meeting of two such protagonists as the secret
foundations of the earth and the greedy, inquisitive importunities of
man.  Down there they wrestle, and man wins; the all-but immovable mass
crumbles, finally, before the irresistible force.  A grinding patience
is at work; the rock spreads in wide and ancient formation; the engine
of man comes stabbing down, through the darkness of the earth, a sharp
and persistent auger.  Up at the top, in the shelter of the rig, the
machinery clanks through the long, hot hours, monotonously; a few
Persians sit about; a young Englishman, grimy in shirt and shorts,
rouses himself from his apathy to give a few explanations to the
strangers.  "Put your hand here", he says, "and you'll feel the
vibration."  You put your hand on the chain, as he tells you, and the
vibration of a thump comes up to your fingers from the battle going on
down there in the bowels of the earth.  But it is the vibration of a
thump which happened eight minutes ago.  Outside, the sun is scorching;
sun-helmets are already necessary, yet the month is only April.  You
are appalled by the thought that this work will continue all through
the summer: if this is April, what will the temperature be in June, in
July, in August?  This is one of the hottest places in the world; the
temperature rises to 126 Fahrenheit, and stays there from May to
October, with the added horror of a damp wind in September; yet through
it all the work never slacks off.  You thank the young Englishman; he
nods, in the indifferent, off-hand manner which all connection with
machinery seems to beget,--you are reminded of the manner of young men
in garages at home.  You go out into the blazing sun, leaving him to
his vigil in the dirty rig among the Persians; leaving him there to the
days which will grow steadily hotter and hotter, while the drill noses
its way down, and the chemists in the laboratory examine the specimens
of rock brought up, lest the drill should suddenly plunge through into
the limestone and a fountain of oil should shoot up into the rig,
uncontrolled, drenching the men and suffocating them with subterranean
gases.  When this dramatic moment is believed to be near at hand, a
notice appears as a warning to those approaching the well.  Terse and
severe, it says: "No smoking.  Drilling in Main Limestone."

[Illustration: THE PIPE LINE CROSSING THE IMAM REZA]

How the oil got there, or what oil actually is, remains an enigma for
geologists and chemists.  Is it the product of buried forests, or of
marine organisms and seaweed strewn on rocks which were once the bed of
a vanished ocean?  Did trees or did millions of fish perish to light
our boarding-houses and drive our motors?  Nobody knows for certain.
Millions of fish,--in this world of doubt one thing at least seems to
be beyond dispute: the quantity of fish that have been spawned since
the beginning of life.  We have grown accustomed to the idea that for
our own chalk cliffs and the atolls of the South Seas these brisk and
multitudinous organisms were responsible; now it seems that we must
credit them also with the world's supply of petrol.  How many
decomposed fish go to one gallon of petrol?  How many roes, spines, and
gills do we burn in one hour of gas?  One fact at any rate is known
about oil even by the most ignorant, and that is that it will not mix
with water.  To this fact it owed its recognition as early as the days
of Herodotus, and became a useful commodity in the ancient
civilisations of China and Japan; for this reason it was known to the
Bakhtiari, who, finding it afloat on the puddles, skimmed it off, and
used the oil to smear on their sores and wounds, and traded in its
deposit of pitch with the Arabs to caulk the seams of boats on the
Tigris and Euphrates.  Its properties as fuel were likewise known to
the Zoroastrians, the ruins of whose Temple of Fire stand to this day
among the wells and derricks of the Company.  On how small a chance
does notoriety depend!  Had oil been of a more accommodating
nature,--had it, in fact, mixed with the water in those miniature
craters which received its seepage,--William Knox d'Arcy might never
have heard the legend of its presence in a lonely valley of the
Bakhtiari hills.

Just as oil is the last thing visible to those who visit, and even to
those who live in, the Persian oil-fields, so do the activities of the
settlement appear to be concerned with many things unconnected with the
getting of oil.  I assume that they all really conspire to the same
end; but the advantage of visiting such a place in complete ignorance,
without even the most elementary technical knowledge, is that one
enters a new world of complicated mystery, much as an ant, with the
ultimate idea of government in mind, might observe the intricacies of
party politics.  This is an oil-field, but I see no oil; I see instead
vast hangars full of boilers and furnaces, pistons and driving-rods,
lathes and leather belts, all glowing and thumping and whirling, stoked
and controlled by dark half-naked men with shovels or
oil-cans--actually!--in their hands, lifting lumps of red-hot metal on
to anvils, striking them with hammers and making the sparks fly,
running with red amorphous masses clipped in giant pincers, setting in
motion a tangle of machinery which will cut a round hole in iron as
though the iron were butter,--and all in the pursuit of that
clandestine deposit of trees, seaweed, or fish.  Very odd.  And all to
send ships across the sea, or motors to course up and down the roads,
or aeroplanes to draw a line across the sky.

[Illustration: LOOKING TOWARDS ARABISTAN]

These sheds, these belching monsters of crude power, these instruments
of strong precision, filled me with an innocent wonder.  Not the least
remarkable thing was, that they should be worked by Persians and
Indians who could probably neither read nor write.  What in heaven's
name did these simple creatures make of the engines of industry?  What
was their general conception, for instance, of the current of
electricity which they could arouse by pulling over a lever?  They knew
their own particular fraction of the work they had been taught, but
what possible conception could they have of the whole?  What, in their
imagination, was the world which their labour helped to feed?  Did they
ever trouble about anything which lay beyond the scope of their own
immediate concern?  And who was I, littered with so many inexact
smatterings of information, to wonder at them, who at least were
trained to beat a lump of metal into shape?

But I realised then that few things can be more suggestive to the lay
mind than machinery on a grand scale.  This demon that we have let
loose among us, however obedient and controlled, still retains its
demoniacal properties.  Its soul is made of fire and force; it performs
its duties to the accompaniment of din and clangour, under the
ever-present menace of strength compressed and withheld.  It is a
fiend; but a fiend not wholly of our own making; the elements existed,
and all that we have done is to confine them into a prison of iron and
steel.  The very iron that we mould runs in a stream of molten liquid
more terrible than fire.  The uninitiated stand amazed, or should stand
amazed, if they have any spark of awe within them, knowing not whether
to wonder most at the magnificence of the elements or at the audacity
of man.  For if the very pigmies who labour, ignorant of all but the
immediate work under their hands, can take on a heroic semblance in the
glare of the furnace, what shall be said of the brain which conceives
such arrogant things--creating, like the musician or the mathematician,
a world out of bare and original material?  Out of fire and force he
creates his own symphonies and equations.  But the musician and the
mathematician move among such delicate morsels as notes and numbers,
abstractions which now appear as existing solely in our imagination,
now as enjoying the only absolute and independent reality; the maker of
engines handles the explosive fiends of nature, and drives them along
such channels as suit the purpose of his will.

At night we ascended a hill and stood looking down on the oil-field
with its ruddy flares glowing in the darkness.  The crumpled ranges
were invisible, but our daylight acquaintance with them made their
presence unforgettable; one could not really persuade oneself that one
was looking down on an outspread town of industrial England; besides,
such soft air as fanned our faces never rose from English soil;
pleasantly warm, at that midnight in that month of April, the
foreboding of the torrid summer was in it.  Nevertheless, it required
an effort to remember that one stood on a hill in Luristan, a hill
designed by its geographical position to rise, one of many, in a region
known only to a roving population, and which by the mere accident of a
primordial vegetable or marine deposit had been rescued for
exploitation out of that wild jumble of hills which constituted the
domain of the Bakhtiari.  This was indeed as much a part of the
Bakhtiari territory, by right, as Qaleh Madrasseh or Agha Mihrab; yet,
because fish had rotted miles beneath the surface the enterprise of the
men of another continent had transfigured the landscape and forced
it--how violently!--into another character.  Twenty years ago this
region lay inviolate; only the wandering shepherds bent to scoop the
oil as it floated on the pools.  Layard, could he return here to-day,
would find some difficulty in identifying the place with his own
description of it.  "They (the ruins of Masjid-i-Suleiman) occur in a
very wild district.  I took advantage of the deserted state of the
country to visit them."  He would not find the country in a deserted
state now.  Below us in the valley stretched the long lines of
road-lights, marking off the populous quarters; but the chief focus of
light concentrated on the huge flares of burning gas, a glowing smear
in the night, those flares whose smoke we had seen from the heights
above Malamir.  And as I stood there, my head full of the things I had
seen that day, half-understood words and explanations jostling together
and producing a sort of thunder of incomprehensible magnificence and
audacity, the remembered solitudes of the Bakhtiari mountains rose up
and swelled together with the energy of the oil-field into a vast,
significant, and, as it were, symbolic symphony.

[Illustration: PERSEPOLIS, THE TERRACE]




XXIII

I see now that although I started this book with little hope of making
it into anything more than the mere record of an expedition, it has
almost of its own accord assumed a certain shape, and piled itself up
into two main blocks, ordained by the force of contrast.  Two different
communities have crossed the stage; the one weary, ignorant, and poor;
the other energetic, scientific, and prosperous; but both equally
enslaved by the habit of their different modes of thought.  I wish I
could say that my impartiality had been such that the reader is unable
to tell which way my sympathies lie.  It seems fitting that it should
conclude with yet a third image--the representation neither of an
anachronistic existence nor of a modern civilisation.  The pastoral
tribes have streamed by, simple survivals from a lost world; the
steam-hammers have thudded round the site of what was once the Temple
of Fire; now it is time to see what becomes of empires as arrogant as
the British and, on so oracular a note, to end.

Persepolis is particularly suitable for such a purpose--to stand midway
between the Bakhtiari country and the outposts of England as typified
by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company.  It is suitable because, although it
was once the capital of the Persian Empire, its ruins now lie among
surroundings as primitive as the plain of Malamir.  The gaunt columns
remain, thrusting up at the sky, but of the site of the city of Istakhr
there is nothing but the nibbled grass.  Persepolis gains in splendour
from its isolation.  Not another building stands anywhere near it; not
a hut, not a guard-house, not a shepherd's shelter; only the vast green
plain, encircled by mountains and the open sky and the hawks that wheel
and hover between the columns.  As a ship launching out on an expanse
of sea, the great terrace drives forward on to the plain, breasting it,
the columns rising like naked spars into the clear blue of the sky.  At
first sight it may seem smaller than one had expected to find it, but
that is due to the immensity of the plain and to the mass of the hill
against which it is pushed up.  The terrace, in fact, juts squarely
out, backing against the hill as though for defence; but the effect is
less of a seeking for defence than of an imperial launching of
defiance, a looking-out across the plain, a raised domination above the
level ground: the throne of kings overhanging the dwellings of the
people.  But the dwellings of the people which once spread over the
plain have disappeared, and nothing of the royal capital remains but
the ruins that were once the citadel of Xerxes and Darius; the
dwellings of the people, no doubt, were made of wattle and sun-dried
bricks, ephemeral material, whereas the kings glorified themselves in
stone.  A thousand years, I suppose, will level the disparity between
them.  The propylaea of Xerxes, the palace of Darius, will have enjoyed
a few thousand more years of survival than sun-baked bazaars which
sheltered the potter and the barber.

So stands Persepolis, looking out over the deserted plain.  The space,
the sky, the hawks, the raised-up eminence of the terrace, the quality
of the Persian light, all give to the great terrace a sort of springing
airiness, a sort of treble, to which the massive structure of bastion
and archways plays a corrective bass.  It is only when you draw near
that you realise how massive that structure really is.  It has all the
weight of the Egyptian temples; square, monolithic.  The terrace itself
is supported on enormous blocks, its angles casting square shadows; a
double stairway climbs it, a stairway that at its landing-place is
superbly dominated by huge winged bulls.  Now you are in the midst of
the ruins: the columns soar, supporting no roof; square doorways open,
leading into no halls.  (But see, within the jamb of one doorway is
carved a king wrestling with a lion, and within another a king stepping
forward under the shade of a parasol; these were the kings that ruled,
but here, following the easy rise of steps, comes a procession of
captive kings.)  A little further, and you are in the Hall of the
Hundred Columns, a wilderness of tumbled ruins, but ruins which in
their broken detail testify to the richness of the order that once was
here: fallen capitals; fragments of carving small enough to go into a
pocket, but whorled with the curls of an Assyrian beard; wars and
dynasties roll their forgotten drums, as the fragment is balanced for a
moment in the palm of the hand.  Over this roofless desolation hangs
the sun, cutting black square shadows, striking a carving into sharper
relief; and silence reigns, but for the dry-leaf scurry of a lizard
over the stones.  This hall was roofed with cedar, says Quintus
Curtius; and now the discovered ashes of carbonised cedar corroborate
the account of the historians: this hall of Darius flamed indeed
beneath the vengeance of Alexander.  Little did it avail Darius that he
should have caused the _Avesta_ to be written in letters of gold and
silver on twelve thousand tanned ox-hides.

The hand of man has never desecrated these ruins, no excavator's pick
has ever rung upon these stones; tumbled and desolate they lie to-day,
as they lay after the might of Alexander had pushed them over.  The
heat of the Persian summers has passed over them and bleached them;
they have flushed in the light of many sunrises and bared themselves to
the silver of many moons; the wild flowers have sown themselves in the
crevices and the lizards scurry over the pavements; but it is a dead
world, as befits the sepulchre of an imperial race.

Ruined cities.  Ranging away from Persepolis, I remember other wrecks
of pride, splendour, and majesty: the ziggurat of Ur against the
sunset, the undulating mounds that were Babylon, the gay broken
colonnades of Palmyra.  Golden, graceful, airy, debased, Palmyra rises
like a flower from the desert in an oasis of palms and apricots.  At
the apex of a flattened and irregular triangle between Damascus and
Baghdad, Palmyra lies on the old caravan route, and the strings of
camels still slouch beneath the triumphal arches of Zenobia and
Odenathus.  But the Street of the Hundred Columns is now nothing but a
transparent screen of pillars, framing the desert, and in the precincts
of the Temple of Baal clusters an Arab village, the squalid houses
incongruously put together with the stones of the once magnificent
centre of a pagan faith.  What is Palmyra now?  Where is the glory of
Solomon who built Tadmor in the wilderness?  A few tourists motor out
from Beirut, and the desert traffic of camel caravans passes through on
its leisurely way.  The Arab children squabble in the gutters.  There
is a French _poste de police_.  There is a derelict building,
originally designed as an hotel.  But now that even the Trans-Desert
Mail no longer takes Palmyra in its rush--as it did when the Druses
terrorised the southern route--it seems likely that Palmyra will return
to the isolation to which it is geographically destined, and that the
flush of its prosperity under the Roman Empire will resemble the flush
of flowers over the desert in spring,--with this difference, that
spring for Palmyra is not recurrent.  It happened once, and will not
happen again; a miracle the more exquisite for its singleness and
fugacity.

[Illustration: PALMYRA]

You come upon Palmyra unexpectedly, if you approach it from the
Damascus side, going through a gorge crowned by Turkish forts, and
coming out on to a full view of the desert with these surprising ruins
standing in the white, pale sand.  Lovely in colour, as golden as
honey, the vistas of columns and arches give Palmyra a lacy quality: it
is a series of frames, and nothing so much enhances the beauty of
landscape as to be framed in a fragment of architecture.  But on
looking closer this architecture presents a puzzle: it is Roman,
surely? but there is something not quite Roman about it; there are
mistakes that the Roman builders would not have made.  Indeed, the
Romans did not build it, no; Arabs built it, dazzled by what they had
seen or heard of the Roman models.  Most people criticise Palmyra on
this account.  Certainly it is neither as pure nor as majestic as
Baalbec.  It lacks the grand solidity of Roman building, and the Roman
sense of proportion is notably absent.  But I like Palmyra.  It is very
feminine; it is gay, whimsical, and a little meretricious.  It seems to
have drunk the desert sun, and to have granted free passage to all the
desert winds with a wanton insouciance.  Palmyra is a Bedouin girl
laughing because she is dressed up as a Roman lady.

And there, lastly, under the snows of Lebanon lie the mighty ruins of
Heliopolis.  The Temple of Bacchus retains its shape, but of the Temple
of Jupiter only six columns survive out of the original fifty-four.
Baalbec had its worthy enemies: Genghiz, Timur, and Saladin; besides
the earthquakes which have crashed pediment and capital to the ground.
There lie the blocks of masonry, here gapes a vault; here is a column,
propping itself against the wall of the Temple.  It is a wilderness of
masonry; havoc such as might have been wrought in a sudden onslaught by
the anger of the very god to whom the greatest temple was dedicated,
that Jupiter who at Baalbec was called Baal,--not the hirsute Jove of
the Romans, but a beardless god, covered with scales, and holding in
one hand a scourge, and in the other, lightning and ears of corn.
Baalbec has gone the way of those cities of antiquity on whose ruin no
later city has arisen.  True, a little town has grown up beside it, so
that it enjoys neither the superb isolation of Persepolis nor the
native sprinkling of Palmyra, but the little town is insignificant, and
it is really the wreck of Heliopolis which dominates the lovely valley
between Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon.

There is another difference between Baalbec and those two other cities.
The plain of Persepolis is green indeed with the short grass, and at
Palmyra the fruit trees of the oasis foam with blossom in the spring,
but there is no sign of cultivation anywhere.  Round Baalbec the
fertile land is carefully tilled; the permanence of agriculture, that
detailed, laborious, and persistent craft, is nowhere more strongly
emphasised than here, where it pursues its quiet way undisturbed by the
presence of a crumbled civilisation.  It seems not irrelevant to wonder
whether in the course of centuries the Anglo-Persian oil-fields may not
revert to the solitudes of the Bakhtiari hills, while London, Paris,
and New York lie with the wild flowers blowing over their stones, and
fields of corn bend to the breeze for the bread of the population in
some distant capital whose name we do not yet know.




BIBLIOGRAPHY


_Persia and the Persian Question_, chap. xxiv.: Lord Curzon.

_Journal of the R.G.S._, vol. ix.: article by Sir H. Rawlinson, 1836.

_Travels in Luristan_: Baron C. A. de Bode, 1841.

_Journeys in Persia_: Mrs. Bishop, 1890.

_Early Adventures in Persia, Susiana, and Babylonia, including a
Residence among the Bakhtiari and other wild Tribes_: Sir Henry Layard,
1887.

_Six Months in Persia_, vol. ii.: E. Stack.

_Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society_, new series, vols. v.
and xii.  _Surveying Tours in Southern Persia_, by Captain H. E. Wells,
1881.  _The Karun River_, by the Hon. G. Curzon, 1890.  _Across
Luristan to Isfahan_, by H. B. Lynch.

_Journal of the Royal Geographical Society_, vols. xii. and xvi.
_Ancient Sites among the Bakhtiari Mountains_, by Prof. Long.  _A
Description of the Province of Khuzistan_, by A. H. Layard.

_Fifteen Months' Pilgrimage through Untrodden Tracks of Khuzistan and
Persia_: J. H. Stocqueler, 1832.



      *      *      *      *      *      *      *      *




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[End of Twelve Days, by V. Sackville-West]
