Isabella L. Bird

“ In the daytime there is a roar or hum of business, mingled with braying of asses, squeals of belligerent 27 horses, yells of camel-drivers and muleteers, beating of drums, shouts of beggars, hoarse-toned ejaculations of fakirs, ear-splitting snatches of discordant music, and in short a chorus of sounds unfamiliar to Western ears, but the nights are so still that the swirl of the Tigris as it hurries past is distinctly heard. Only the long melancholy call to prayer, or the wail of women over the dead, or the barking of dogs, breaks the silence which at sunset falls as a pall over Baghdad. ”

“ A sea of mud varied by patches of sodden snow, walls of rock with narrow passes, great snow-covered mountains, seen spectrally for a minute at a time through swirling snow-clouds, black tents of nomads, half-drowned villages, and a long, cold, steep ascent, among scrub oaks and dwarf ash, to snow which was not melting, and the hospitalities of a Kurdish village, comprise the interests of the march from Saripul to Myan Tak, so far as they lie on the surface, but in various ways this part of Kurdistan has many interests, not to be absolutely ignored even in a familiar letter. ”

“ The light and profane use of the Divine name is universal. The dervishes curse, but every one uses the name Allah wherever they can bring it in. The Ya Allah, as an expression of fatigue, or discontent, or interest, or nothing, is heard all day, and the boy who drives a cow, or a team, or a mule in a caravan, cries Ya Allah incessantly as an equivalent of "go along," and the gardener pushing his spade into the ground, the chopper with every blow of the axe, the labourer throwing up bricks, ejaculates the same. ”

“ It is a miserable hamlet of low windowless mud hovels, with uneven mud floors, one or two feet lower than the ground outside, built in yards with ruinous walls, and full of heaps and holes. It is an olla podrida of dark, poor, smoky mud huts; narrow dirt-heaped alleys, with bones and offal lying about; gaunt yelping dogs; bottle-green slimy pools, and ruins. The people are as dirty as the houses, but they are fine in physique and face, as if only the fittest survive. There is an imamzada, much visited on Fridays, on an adjacent slope. The snow lies here five feet deep in winter, it is said. ”

“ There were rifts, valleys, gorges, naked, nearly perpendicular rocks, the faces of mountains, half of which had fallen down in the opposite direction, a snow-filled valley, a winding river with brief blue stretches, a ruined fort on an eminence, a sharp turn, a sudden twilight, and then another blizzard far colder than the last, raging down a lateral ravine, up which, even through the blinding drift, were to be seen, to all seeming higher than mountains of this earth, the twin peaks of Shamran lighted by the sun. ”

“ The "Desert" sweeps up to the walls of Baghdad, but it is a misnomer to call the vast level of rich, stoneless, alluvial soil a desert. It is a dead flat of uninhabited earth; orange colocynth balls, a little wormwood, and some alkaline plants which camels eat, being its chief products. After the inundations reedy grass grows in the hollows. It is a waste rather than a desert, and was once a populous plain, and the rich soil only needs irrigation to make it "blossom as the rose." Traces of the splendid irrigation system under which it was once a garden abound along the route. ”

“ I rode a splendid Arab, with a neck "clothed with 114 thunder," a horse to make one feel young again, with his elastic stride and pride of bearing, but indeed I "snatched a fearful joy," for the snow was extremely slippery, and thirteen Arab horses in high condition restrained to a foot's pace had belligerent views of their own, tending to disconcert an unwary rider. We crossed the Karasu by a deep and devious ford up to the girths, and had an exhilarating six miles' ride by moonlight in keen frost, the powdery snow crackling under the horses' feet. ”

“ In a corner of the big room, among the rough trunks of trees which support the sooty roof, the muleteers were lying in a heap in their big-sleeved felt coats round a big fire, about another the servants were cooking their food, the farāshes were lying round another, and some of the house people about a fourth, and through smoke and flame a background of mules and wolf-like dogs was dimly seen, a gleam now and then falling into the dark stable beyond, where the jaded baggage animals were lying in heaps. ”

“ Then there is an abrupt and disagreeable change to yellow mud slopes and high mud mountains deeply fissured, the scanty herbage already eaten down by Ilyat flocks—a desolate land, without springs, streams, or even Ilyat tents. Then comes a precipice at an altitude of 7500 feet, through a cleft in which, the Tang-i-Wastagun, the road passes, and descends to the plain of Gandaman as something little better than a sheep track on a steep hillside above a stream. The heat was fierce. A pair of stout gardening gloves does not preserve the hands from blistering. ”

“ In order to become thoroughly warm it was necessary to walk long and briskly on the roof, and this brought all the villagers below it to stare the stare of vacuity rather than of curiosity. A snow scene is always beautiful at sunset, and this was exceptionally so, as the long indigo shadows on the plain threw into greater definiteness the gleaming, glittering hills, at one time dazzling in the sunshine, at another flushed in the sunset. ”

“ It was a serious start, so terribly slippery in the heaped-up alleys and uncovered bazars of Kangawar that several of the mules and men fell. Outside the town was a level expanse of deep, wrinkled, drifted, wavy, scintillating snow, unbroken except for a rut about a foot wide, a deep long "mule ladder," produced by heavily-laden mules and asses each stepping in its predecessor's footsteps, forming short, deep corrugations, in which it is painful and tedious for horses or lightly-laden animals to walk. ”

“ Reedy marshes, alive with water-fowl, arable lands, bare buff plains, brown tents, brown flocks, mat huts, mud and brick villages, groups of women and children, flights of armed horsemen, alternate rapidly,—the unchanging features are the posts and wires of the telegraph.
The Tigris in parts is wonderfully tortuous, and at one great bend, "The Devil's Elbow," a man on foot can walk the distance in less than an hour which takes the steamer four hours to accomplish. ”

“ After riding for six hours the rain changed into sleet and wet snow, blotting out the hills and creating an unnatural twilight, in which we floundered in mud up to the mules' knees into the filthiest village I have ever seen, a compound of foul, green ditches, piles of dissolving manure, mud hovels looking as if they were dissolving too, reed huts, and an Ilyat village, grouped round the vilest of caravanserais, the entrance to which was knee-deep in mire. ”

“ This river, gaining continually in volume, makes a turbulent descent to the Karun a few miles from the point where we left it. This was the finest day's march of the journey. The mountain forms were grander and more definite, the vegetation richer, the scenery more varied, and a kindlier atmosphere pervaded it. In the midst of a wood of fine walnut trees, ash, and hawthorn, laced together by the tendrils of vines, a copious stream tumbles over rocks fringed with maiden-hair, and sparkles through grass purple with orchises. ”

“ The "sewers" are clear rapid streams, margined by grass and dandelions, and shaded by ash trees and pollard willows in their first flush of green. The "narrow alleys" are scrupulously clean, and there is neither mud nor dust. If I go up on the roof I see a cultivated oasis, gardens prolonged indefinitely concealing the desert which lies between them and the bold mountain ranges which surround this lofty and breezy plain. Every breeze is laden with the delicious odour of the bean blossom. ”

“ The villages are clusters of mud hovels, scarcely distinguishable from the wastes, and many of them are ruined and deserted, oppressive exactions or a failure of water being common reasons for a migration. These dismal ruins are shapeless heaps of mud, the square towers of the square walls alone retaining any semblance of form.
Long lines of choked kanaats, denoted by their crumbling shafts, attest the industrious irrigation of a former day. Tracks wind wearily among shrunken villages, or cross ridges of mud or gravel to take their unlovely way over arid stony plains. ”

“ The more distant plain is sparsely sprinkled with clusters of brown tents, long and low, and is dotted over with flocks of large brown sheep, shepherded by Arabs in kiffiyehs, each shepherd armed with a long gun slung over his shoulder. Herds of cattle and strings of camels move slowly over the brown plain, and companies of men on horseback, with long guns and lances, gallop up to the river bank, throw their fiery horses on their haunches, and after a moment of gratified curiosity wheel round and gallop back to the desert from which they came. ”

“ An impassive Turk, silently smoking, sits cross-legged on a platform at each Turkish shop door. He shows his goods as if he had no interest in them, and whether he sells or not seems a matter of indifference, so that he can return to his pipe. It is not to him that the overpowering din is owing, but to the agitated eagerness of the other nationalities.
The charm of the bazars lies in the variety of race and costume and in the splendid physique of the greater number of the men. The European looks "nowhere." ”

“ The mire was tenacious and up to the horses' knees, half the mules were down with their loads, Hadji rolled into the mud, my capable animal snorted and struggled, some went on banks and some took to streams, the asses had to be relieved of their loads, and the air was full of shouts and objurgations, till after much delay the forlorn rabble all struggled to the terra firma of a gravelly slope, splashed from head to foot. ”

“ A snow wind blows keenly. My fingers are nearly numb, and I am generally stiff and aching, but so much better that discomforts are only an amusement. Snow is said to be impending. 53 I have lunched frugally on sheep's milk and dates, and feel everything but my present surroundings to be very far off, and as if I had lived the desert life, and had heard the chimes of the great caravans, and had seen the wild desert riders, and the sun sinking below the level line of the desert horizon, for two months instead of two days. ”

“ A fine, strong, full river it is there and at Isfahan in spring, so prolific in good works that one regrets that it should be lost sixty miles east of Isfahan in the Gas-Khana, an unwholesome marsh, the whole of its waters disappearing in the Kavir. Many large villages with imposing pigeon-towers lie along this part of its course, surrounded with apricot and walnut orchards, wheat and poppy fields, every village an oasis, and every oasis a paradise, as seen in the first flush of spring. ”

“ There was a great crowd outside the Palace gates, where we were received by many men in scarlet. The private gardens are immense, and beautifully laid out, in a more formal style than I have hitherto seen, with straight, hard gravel walks, and straight avenues of trees. The effect of the clear running water in the immense tanks lined with blue tiles is most agreeable and cool. Continuous rows of orange trees in tubs, and beds of narcissus, irises, and tulips, with a wealth of trellised roses just coming into leaf, are full of the promise of beauty. ”

“ Ere long we came on solemn traces of the struggle and defeat of the day before: every now and then a load of chopped straw thrown away, then the deep snow much trampled, then the snow dug away and piled round a small space, in which the charvadars had tried to shelter themselves from the wind as the shadows of death fell, then more straw, and a grave under a high mound of snow; farther on some men busy burying one of the bodies. ”

“ The chapar khana was full of men, so I have had to sink to the level of a recessed den with a manger in front in a ruinous caravanserai crowded with Persian travellers, muleteers, mules, horses, and asses, and the courtyard half-choked with ruins. I had not seen the inside of one of these dens before. Travellers have exhausted the vocabulary of abuse upon them; possibly they deserve it in the "vermin season"; but there is nothing worse than a square and perfectly dark room, with unplastered walls blackened by the smoke and cobwebs of ages, and a door which will not fasten. ”

“ A stroll through the Tihran bazars shows the observer something of the extent and rapidity with which Europe is ruining the artistic taste of Asia. Masses of rubbish, atrocious in colouring and hideous in form, the principle of shoddy carried into all articles along with the quintessence of vulgarity which is pretence, goods of nominal utility which will not stand a week's wear, the refuse of European markets—in art Philistinism, in most else "Brummagem," without a quality of beauty or solidity to recommend them—are training the tastes and changing the habits of the people. ”

“ From a confusion of ruinous or ragged walls of mud, of ruined and modern houses standing complacently among heaps of rubbish, and from amidst a greenery which redeems the scene, the blue tiled dome of the Masjid-i-Shah, a few minarets, and the great dome of the Medresseh, denuded of half its tiles, rise conspicuously. Long lines of mud streets and caravanserais, gaunt in their ruin, stretch into the desert, and the 258 city once boasting of 650,000 inhabitants and a splendid court survives with a population of less than 80,000 at the highest estimate. ”

“ I have been en route for a week under the best possible circumstances—the nights always cool, the days never too warm, the accommodation tolerable, the caravan in excellent working order, no annoyances, and no grievances. The soldier who attends me arranges everything for my comfort, and is always bright and kind. I have no ambition to "beat the record," but long gallops on a fine Arab horse turn marches of from twenty-two to thirty miles into delightful morning rides of from three and a half to four and a half hours, with long pleasant afternoons following them, and sound sleep at night. ”

“ Welcome indeed is the sunset. With joy men fill their pipes and drink tea as a prelude to the meal eaten an hour afterwards. Hateful is the dawn and the cry an hour before it, "Water! oh, water and opium!"—the warning to the faithful to drink largely and swallow an opium pill before sunrise. The thirst even in weather like this, and the abstention from smoking, are severer trials than the fasting from food. The Persian either lives to smoke, or smokes to live.
Although travellers are nominally exempt from the fast from water at least, pious Moslems do not avail themselves of the liberty. ”