The Western Elburz and Persian Azerbaijan (Captain L. S. Fortescue, 1924)

THE WESTERN ELBURZ AND PERSIAN AZERBAIJAN

Captain L. S. Fortescue

Read at the Meeting of the Society, 11 February 1924.

A peaceful student of the classics on the banks of the Isis in the spring of 1914, I little thought that the autumn would find me bound for the East with a Territorial Battalion. But such was the fortune of war. Stationed in Northern India until the spring of 1917, I was then transferred to the Persian Gulf and the long-drawn-out misery of the Mesopotamian hot weather. During the ensuing year I thrice made the long journey of some 300 miles from Basra to Baghdad on horseback, and the sight of the Pasht-i-Kuh, standing out as a long rampart all along the arid monotonous plain of the Tigris, made me yearn to escape to the distant and mysterious highlands of Persia, with their alluring prospect of varied scenery and cool mountain air.

Having thus made Persia my goal I turned to the study of Persian ― a step in the right direction, as a sympathetic commanding officer obtained for me the desired opportunity in 1918. I was sent to Persia, and attached to Norperforce as Assistant Political Officer at Kazvin until 1920, when I had the good fortune to be detailed to compile a Report for General Headquarters Baghdad on the region of North Persia at that time occupied by the British Forces. The approximate boundaries indicated were: from Bandar-i-Gaz, near the south-east corner of the Caspian, to Tehran, Saveh, Hamadan, Bijar, Mianeh, and the Caspian.

I shall not venture into the troubled arena of politics and policies, but I will endeavour to give you the general impressions of a traveller in the Elburz Mountains and in the south-eastern districts of Persian Azerbaijan. In the early spring of 1920 Captain Noel, starting from Tehran, crossed the Elburz, still bleak and inhospitable at that season, to join me on the shores of the Caspian, where he travelled with me for six weeks. In his paper read to the Society in January 1921 he described and illustrated these Caspian Provinces.

In preparing my paper for this evening I have refrained from going over the same ground ; my purpose will be to describe to you in some detail the valleys on the south side of the watershed of the Elburz, where I shall not have occasion to overlap with any part of Captain Noel's paper except in the valley of Nur; then my narrative will pass on to an entirely fresh area, which I have traversed in a journey from Manjil up the valley of the Qizil Uzun through south-eastern Azerbaijan by Mianeh to the borders of Garrus.

This area, with which my Report was to deal, is some 400 miles long and 200 miles broad. Apart from the familiar lines of approach to Tehran, namely the Russian metalled roads from the Caspian and from Hamadan, and the unmetalled road from Tabriz viâ Mianeh and Zinjan, the country is traversed by camel and mule tracks of varying degrees of badness.

While Assistant Political Officer in 1920 I had already been able to visit the regions north of Tehran and of Kazvin respectively. But it was the Report entrusted to me by General Headquarters Baghdad that gave me unparalleled facilities for travel in this area. The route shown on the sketch-map shows my longest journey of just about 1000 miles on horseback, from the middle of March 1920 until the end of June. It enabled me to spend the spring in the Caspian Lowlands, and the early summer in the Highlands. The map does scant justice to the difficulties imposed by nature in the shape of the great mountain chain of the Elburz, and the awful quagmires and impenetrable thickets and thorns of the Caspian Provinces.

The name "Elburz" is applied by geographers to the whole mountain barrier which runs round the south and south-west shores of the Caspian, from Khorasan in the east to Azerbaijan in the north-west, cutting off Irak, as the Persians loosely term the treeless plateau country of the Samnan, Tehran, Kazvin, and Zenjan plains, at an elevation of 4000 to 5000 feet above sea-level, from the Jangal of the Caspian Provinces. The natives, however, of these mountains limit the name Elburz to a single ridge in Alamut. They give local names to every prominent ridge or peak, but they have no comprehensive name for the whole system.

The gap of Manjil by which the Sefid Rud, the "White River," breaks through this range is traversed by the Russian road from Gilan to Tehran. Further east the Elburz is crossed by the low and well-defined pass of Firuzkuh, which, except after very heavy falls of snow, remains open throughout the year. This pass at an elevation of 6620 feet involves a very slight ascent from this southern side, and the descent towards the Caspian is long and fairly gradual. It affords a natural line of access between the plateau of Persia and the Caspian littorai, and would not present any great difficulties to the construction of a metalled road. Elsewhere the mule routes radiating from Samnan, Tehran, Kazvin, and Zenjan zigzag laboriously up to the summit of ridges at heights of 9000 feet to 12,000 feet above sea-level.  On the section of the Elburz between the Firuzkuh pass and the gap of Manjil there are ten such routes, and of six I have personal experience. They are rendered impassable by snow for one to six months every winter — according to their altitude and exposure — and none of them could be improved and rendered passable for camel, much less for wheeled transport, without prodigious labour and expense. The most important of them, the Harhaz route from Tehran to Amol, has the merit of crossing only a single ridge of 8700 feet to reach the valley of the Harhaz, which breaks through the central Elburz range by a great gorge; but this track is subject to scouring from the slopes of Demavend, which would render the upkeep of a road extremely difficult. 

North-west of Manjil there are three routes from Zenjan, one from Mianeh, and one further north from Ardebil to Astara. Disturbed political conditions prevented me from reconnoitring the Zinjan routes over the ridge between the Qizil Uzun valley and Gilan, but though these passes are less elevated and snowbound for shorter periods, local reports described them as very difficult. Of the Mianeh route viâ Hirabad, I was unable to obtain any information except that it was abandoned on account of the prevailing insecurity. The Tabriz- Ardebil-Astara route, the most important of the routes north-west of Manjil, lay outside my area. The distance along most of these routes from the point where they enter the mountains on the plateau side to where they debouch on to the coastal lowlands is approximately 100 miles.

To commence our visit to the mountain valleys, let us go up the valley of the Karaj river through the district of Laura. This valley is separated from the headwaters of the Chalus, draining north into the Caspian, by the single pass of Kandavan, which would at first sight appear to indicate it as the easiest line of approach from the neighbourhood of Tehran to the Caspian. This route is rendered all the more tempting by the accessibility of the Karaj bridge on the Tehran-Kazvin road, where the Karaj river debouches on to the plain, which is the jumping-off point for a journey up the valley. The first two stages of the track above this bridge are, however, so difficult that the muleteers prefer a détour involving an extra pass viâ the Jajarud, or over the shoulder of the Tochal mountain, and these stages were a lesson to me scrupulously to avoid any route described as "bad" by local report. An Elburz route worse than the average must be bad indeed!

A short distance above the bridge the valley is shut in between mountains of 10,000 to 11,000 feet. The river breaks through a series of defiles with few open spaces or villages as far as the junction of the stream from Shahristanak, where the Jajarud and Tochal routes join the valley of the Karaj — or the Laura, as it is now named — and follow it up to the watershed. Above this junction the valley is still wild and rockbound, but it has some picturesque nooks, as at Tangi Khasil, where a wayside teashop (qahvehkhaneh) nestles under the beetling cliffs and serves as a club for the adjacent villagers to meet and discuss the latest news and gossip brought from town or Caspian seaboard by the passing "charvadars" (muleteers), who are still the newsagents and letter-carriers of these remote mountain valleys, as they were in the days of Darius. It is a spot to tempt the angler and the artist, as the Karaj, fed by cool clear mountain springs, is the home of an old friend whom I had not expected to meet in Persia — the brown trout, the kizil ala, or "red spots," as the Persians call him.

Above Tangi Khasil the valley broadens slightly and affords room for numerous strips of cultivation. In these confined valleys of the Elburz it is not lack of water for irrigation, as on the plateau of Persia, but lack of level ground that limits cultivation, and viewed from above the patches of verdure clinging to the river-bank appear tiny in relation to the whole mountain area. Besides their immensity, the absence of man and of civilization seems one of the most striking features of great Asiatic 'ranges, like the Himalayas and the Elburz, which differentiates them from the Alps, where one looks down into fertile highly cultivated valleys.

Nature is not kind to the efforts of man in the Elburz valleys. In the summer of 1919 there was a terrific deluge, which swept down these bare mountain sides and inundated the poor little fields, levelled and cleared at the cost of so much labour, a foot deep with boulders and débris.

The peasantry do not live in scattered cottages, but are grouped in small villages averaging fifteen to forty houses, surrounded by walnut and poplar trees, which provide fuel and rafters for roofing for the villagers, and welcome shade for the traveller's bivouac in summer.

The crops produced in the adjacent fields are wheat for the inhabitants, and lucerne and barley for their mules. Not only is the cultivable area very limited in extent, but the soil becomes very impoverished and gives a poor yield, the crop — to use the Persian mode of reckoning — seldom exceeding five to six times the quantity of seed sown. The lion's share often falls to the landlord, who takes his rent in kind. The harvest is divided on the threshing floor between landlord and tenant; the method of division varies in different localities, but the following is typical: The harvest is divided into five shares — one for the land, one for the water, one for the seed, one for the oxen that plough, and one for the labour. The first three are usually the property of the landlord, the last two of the peasantry.

The land is still the basis of wealth; it is held for the most part by a small number of big proprietors, who not infrequently indulge in landgrabbing. A powerful neighbour may cut off the supply of irrigation water, and in various ways make life so unpleasant for the small holder that eventually he is forced to sell on the great man's terms. The Persian Revolution of 1906 and the Constitutional system, that has supplanted the autocracy of the Shah, have hitherto enhanced rather than diminished the power of the landowning aristocracy, who dispose of the votes of their illiterate peasantry and consequently control the elections, while they themselves have been freed from the control exercised by the Shah under the ancient régime. Recent political developments in Persia and the increasing power of Riza Khan may modify this state of affairs.

Persian landowners might well entertain misgivings about the Bolshevik contagion and fear its spread into their country from the Caspian, but the Persian peasant has a direct individual interest in the soil under the system of land tenure described. Provided the crops do not fail, and he is not too ruthlessly fleeced, he is essentially easygoing and peaceful, and the Bolshevik propaganda of the last few years — with the exception of the anti-British part of it — has failed to make any appreciable headway.

In most Elburz villages the crops barely suffice for the maintenance of the villagers, whose standard of living is much higher than that of the peasantry of Northern India, and provide no surplus for the purchase of clothing and other needs. The villagers consequently augment their resources by flocks of sheep and by the carrying trade, which passes along these mountain valleys. It consists in the interchange of commodities between the plateau and the Caspian Provinces, of wheat, barley, dried fruits, and salt from the former, and of rice, charcoal, dairy produce, fish, and oranges from the latter, the towns of Tehran, Kazvin, and Zenjan being the principal distributing centres. The high cost of transport in Persia is grievous, and the value of a mule-load of rice in Tehran is treble its value in Mazanderan, and the price of charcoal is increased tenfold.

The village is the administrative unit, and has its Kadkhuda, or headman, who is appointed by the landlord (Arbab), usually in consultation with the peasantry, and is the former's agent for the collection of his rent. If ownership is divided between two or more landlords, a separate kadkhuda is appointed for each of the different properties, and in villages divided into small holdings, the kadkhuda is appointed by the Government for the collection of the land tax. In addition to the kadkhuda some of the larger villages appoint as their representatives a number of elders, Rish Safid (Greybeards), who take the side of the villagers in case of disputes between villagers and kadkhuda or landlord. An important personage in the village community is the priest, Mujtahid or Akhund, who conducts marriages and burials, draws up and countersigns all deeds, etc, and settles disputes between villagers. Only serious cases are taken to the Governors of Districts, into which the provinces are divided, whose authority is very little felt. The provincial governor represents government in his capital, which he rarely if ever leaves, and deputy governors seldom tour through their districts. It is the landlord, his agents, and the priests who are the principal power in the country side.

The visible signs of the religion of the villagers are the whitewashed Imamzadeh, or Shrine, which is to be seen in nearly all Elburz villages, and, during the month of Muharram, the Taziyehkhani, or Passion Play, representing the events in the lives of the Imams and Prophets. The apparition of myself, and even of my camera, was not resented at these plays, though the ladies discreetly veiled. Muharram celebrations in the villages are a much simpler affair than in the cities of Persia, where the religious enthusiasm of these Sh'iah Muhammadans reaches its climax on the tenth day of Muharram, the anniversary of the slaughter of Husain and his followers on the plain of Kerbela, which is commemorated by the well-known processions of the "Followers of Husain" (Shah Husainiha), bareheaded, clad in white, and bloodstained from the blows of swords and knives.

During all my travels in the Elburz I always met with friendliness and hospitality. In summer I used to bivouac in the shade of walnut or poplar trees, but in inclement weather the kadkhuda would always find a room: and in a good-class village house, with a blazing log fire, one used to be very comfortable. Anon, however, one might be overtaken by wind and rough weather, where the accommodation was of a humbler type. I well remember arriving late on a stormy autumn evening at a poor village on the Caspian side of the watershed. With some difficulty we were installed in a small cottage. Being the fortunate possessor of a camp bed, I slept peacefully on this citadel, while my less fortunate companion dossed down on the felts spread on the floor and spent a night of martyrdom. In the morning he looked like a measles case, so innumerable were the bites of the insects who had derived nourishment from him.

The upper reaches of the Karaj valley, at a height of over 7000 feet above sea, are a very pleasant Yailaq or Highland summer quarters, frequented by the inhabitants during the hot season. In autumn the majority of the villagers, to escape the rigours of winter, cross the water-shed to lowland winter quarters, Qishlaq, along the Caspian littoral. During the winter months the Elburz villages, and in summer the low-land villages, are semi-deserted, and the traveller has to reckon with difficulty in obtaining supplies and accommodation as well as with climatic difficulties if he has occasion to traverse either of these regions during the inauspicious season.

After my long journey I spent July and August 1920 working at my Report at a summer camp in the Karaj valley. The atmosphere was of a clearness and purity which I have only seen equalled in Iceland or in the Himalayas in autumn after the rains, and the climate was delicious, with a range of temperatures between 50° and 70°, whereas Tehran during these months has an average range of 70° to 100°. The site of my summer camp was a little plateau behind the village of Nisa, where Nasir-ud-Din Shah used often to camp on his way from Tehran to his favourite hunting ground of Kalardasht, described by Captain Noel. It overlooked the valley and the great bare mountains beyond, and the open view induced a delicious sense of space and freedom, which is often lacking in mountain valleys. My Persian servants did not share my appreciation of this secluded camp; a sowar, who had served me well, heard rumours of a Bolshevik-Jangali raiding party in the neighbourhood of his village, and next morning he had disappeared; and my cook, a Tehrani, was restrained with the greatest difficulty from running away to the amenities of town life. Rumour was rife after the withdrawal of the British troops from Manjil, but no raiding party was ever reported within several stages of my camp.

From the Karaj valley there are several tracks across the watershed to the Caspian littoral. The main mule route leaves the valley at Gachisar, crosses the ridge of Kandavan (9460 feet), and descends the valley of the Chalus. The view from the ridge itself is not very extensive, but some 3 miles further one has from the road a magnificent view over the forest-clad ravines of the Chalus, dominated by lofty mountains. This view, and that from the Nur ridge of Damavand to the south and of the Caspian to the north, are most striking examples of Elburz scenery. From Gachisar to the Caspian is four stages, the first three of which are described by Colonel Beresford Lovett in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society for February 1883. The road has since then been allowed to fall into disrepair, but it is used by numerous mule convoys.

Another route from Tehran to the Caspian ascends the Jajarud valley and crosses the Dizin pass (10,490 feet) to the head waters of the Karaj, which it descends to within 5 miles of Gachisar, and then turns north up a side valley to the Sutak pass. A footpath goes up the valley from Gachisar to join this route, but it is too bad for a loaded mule. The Sutak pass at 11,315 feet is closed by snow from November to June.

The ascent on the southern side is extremely steep, but on the north the descent to the Nur valley is not difficult. A second pass, named Kurdu, about 9800 feet, leads on from the Nur valley to Mikhsas in the Pul district.

To the west the Karaj area is divided from the area draining into the Shahrud, which flows into the Sefid Rud at Manjil, by the easy Asalak pass (9400 feet), which is approached by a tributary valley joining the right bank of the Karaj, 2 miles downstream of Gachisar. In October 1920, after leaving my summer camp, I crossed this pass, and then turned north up a tributary of the Talaghan stream to the pass known as the Hazar Cham of Talaghan, at a height of about 12,000 feet. It is one of the loftiest passes in the Elburz, and snowbound from November until the end of June.

I have never traversed the whole length of the valley of the Shahrud from Talaghan down to Manjil, but I visited various parts of it from Kazvin. The most interesting of my journeys in that area was from the Caspian to Kazvin, in the autumn of 1919. From the district of Tunakabun, on the Caspian littorai, the mule track ascends the misty forest-clad valley of the Seh Hazar to the Salambar pass (11,200 feet), the watershed between the Seh Hazar and Alamut.

The sombre valley of Alamut accords well with its associations as the fastness during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries of the "Old Man of the Mountains," the chief of the fanatical sect of the "Hashishin," who under the influence of the drug hashish specialized in disposing of their enemies by the way to which posterity has attached the name "assassination." There is, however, another aspect of the story of Hasan Sabah, which is difficult to reconcile with this desolate valley. The legend speaks of enchanting gardens, where the agents destined to carry out their chiefs deadly behests were initiated into a foretaste of the joys of paradise. Impossible to picture paradise on the narrow summit of the barren crag where tradition places the fortress of Hasan Sabah! The use of the drug "hashish" is unfortunately widespread in modern Persia — in the Caspian Provinces, for instance, 30 per cent. of the people are said to be addicted to it and to opium — but the modern devotees of the drug have none of the ferocity of the ancient "hashishin."

West of the region I have been describing is the passage pierced by the Sefid Rud through the mountains below Manjil. Except for the area draining into the Caspian by this river, the whole of the drainage from the plateau either loses itself in the salt desert known as the kavir, the "dead heart of Persia," or makes its way to the far-distant Persian Gulf.

In June 1920 the Bolsheviks were in possession of the Caspian littoral, and I received instructions to continue my reconnaissance from Manjil up the valley and make my way to Mianeh. Following the left bank of the river from Manjil I traversed the district of Tarum in three stages. Persian accounts describe the valley as fertile and productive of great quantities of fruit. There are fruit gardens — figs, plums, pomegranates, vines, etc. — around the villages ; but this description of Tarum as a whole is, to say the least of it, exaggerated.

The valley is broad and open, bounded by hills rising from 3500 or 4500 feet above it. The river, being considerably below the level of the land on either side, is not utilized for irrigation, and all cultivation depends on tributary streams from the hills, which, especially on the left bank, are few and small; the aspect of the country is most desolate, the villages appearing as small oases in the wilderness. And such villages! The population has suddenly changed from Persian to Turkish.

The ethnographical divisions of this area of North Persia are roughly as follows:

South-east of Manjil the area enclosed by the Elburz, by a rough line from Manjil to Siyah Dahan, south-west of Kazvin, and continued thence to the south of Tehran, is Persian. The Mazanderanis and Gilaris, on the Caspian side of the Elburz, are as different from the dwellers of the plateau as their verdant forest country and its climate are different from the arid tawny hills and plains of "Irak"; moreover, while understanding Persian, they speak a variety of dialects. They are however of Persian origin, and the differences are due to geographical and climatic rather than to racial differences. But Azerbaijan and parts of the provinces to the south, in the area enclosed by the watershed to near Manjil, by a rough line thence to Siyah Dahan continued northwest of the Kazvin-Hamadan road, are wholly Turkish. South-east of this road there is an admixture of Persian, but Turkish predominates.

Of the towns Saveh is entirely Persian, though the villages within a few miles of it are Turkish ; about a third of the population of Kazvin appears to be Turkish, and a smaller part of the population of Tehran. The transition from the Persian to the Turkish area is often surprisingly sudden. Manjil, for instance, is Persian; the next village of Gilivan, which we passed 17 miles higher up the valley, is Turkish, and we had difficulty in finding anybody who could understand Persian; for the remainder of my journey one of my Persian servants, who could speak Turki, had to act as interpreter.

There is a corresponding change in the name of the river; downstream of Manjil it bears a Persian name, the Sefid Rud, or "White River," whereas upstream of Manjil it bears a Turkish name, the Qizil Uzun, or "Long Red River." The apparent confusion is presumably due to the different colour of the river at different seasons of the year. It is red when swollen with the snow melting on the Persian Highlands in spring and early summer, whereas when running low in autumn it changes to a grey or milky hue.

These Turks are descended from various bodies of invaders from Central Asia into Persia, such as the Ghuzz tribes who came in during the Seljuk period in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. After the Seljuks ensued the Mongol invasions and the rule of the Mongol Khans, who had their capitals at Maragha, Tabriz, and Sultanieh (near Zenjan).

The characteristics of the Turkish village population are radically different from those of their Persian neighbours, and the change of race is deplorable, from the point of view of the traveller. The Turki peasantry is sullen, boorish, and fanatical by comparison with the cheerful and quick-witted Persian, and the filth of their villages is worthy of their Mongol ancestors. They are avaricious and distrustful of strangers. In short, they seem to possess the bad without the redeeming qualities of the Persian, whom they regard with antipathy as a foreigner. This feeling is reciprocated in the Persian slang expression: Tu be qadri Turk khar ye ("You're as big an ass as a Turk'"). These Turks of North Persia being Shi'ah are kept apart from the Ottoman Turks by religious differences.

The Turkish area is more disturbed than the peaceful Persian countryside. The following is an extract from my diary on 29 May 1920, the day after our departure from Manjil: "On nearing the village of Kariz we heard a good deal of shouting followed by shots coming from the direction of the river. One shot came decidedly near us, and we began to wonder what was happening, until some men ran up and explained that they were in search of a mule which had been stolen during the preceding night; seeing us on horseback they suspected us of being the robbers, and had consequently come in pursuit. This is the first occasion on which I have been taken for a horse-thief!"

Our first two stages through Tarum on May 28 and 29 were hot and exhausting. The cooling effect of the north wind, blowing up from the Caspian, ceases to be felt a short distance above Manjil, and in summer the heat becomes intense. Progress was slow, as there is no regular mule route up the valley, and we were following a succession of village-to- village tracks. The only carrying trade in this region is between Zenjan and Gilan, and on passing one of these routes we saw several convoys of mules crossing the river. Their loads were placed in a ferryboat, but the animals swam and were carried a considerable distance downstream by the swift current.

Our third stage took us further from the river into a more pleasant country nearer to the watershed to Banari, commanding a wide view over the valley of the Qizil Uzun, where we were entertained by the Deputy Governor of Upper Tarum. Next morning we awoke to find the alarm had been given that Shahsavan horsemen were threatening villages 10 miles away across the hills, and our host had ridden off with his followers to protect his property.

The remaining stages of our journey, as far as Mianeh, were haunted by rumours of Shahsavan raiders. These rumours never materialized, but they were sufficient to alarm the muleteers and to cause us much difficulty in obtaining transport; and nervous village sentinels let off sundry shots in our direction. Fear of the Shahsavans did not, however, incline the Turki villagers to be well disposed towards us, and we were often made to feel that our presence was unwelcome. My little party, of myself and another British officer, with a Ghurka orderly, two Persian sowars, and servants, was not large enough to inspire respect, especially at this time, when the news of the British evacuation of Enzali on the Caspian before the Bolsheviks was already widespread! The wholesome moral effect of a little force in this part of the world was shown one day by the passage just over our heads of a British aeroplane, presumably bound for Tabriz. A peasant, hitherto surly, supposing the unwonted visitor to have some connection with us, promptly became most attentive, and invited us to graze our horses in his best clover field.

Near Banari the natural feature undergo a sudden change. The wide open valley of Tarum comes to an end, and the Qizil Uzun flows through a winding ravine 2500 to 3000 feet deep. It appears to begin near Miayansarah, the junction of a small tributary called the Shahrud with the Qizil Uzun, and continues for some 50 miles through Khalkhal, to within a few miles of Mianeh. There is no track up the ravine, as the river runs against numerous spurs of cliff thrown down from the plateaus above, and villages are few and far between. It can only be crossed at a few points by stony tracks with gradients of 1 in 5 and 1 in 6. To the north and south above the brink of the ravine, and in striking contrast to its desolation, stretch fertile rolling uplands, 6000 to 7000 feet above sea, the finest unirrigated land for wheat and barley in this area.

From Barandaq, the next stage beyond Banari, the easiest and shortest way to Mianeh lies over these uplands on the north of the Qizil Uzun. The Shahsavan scare, however, rendered it absolutely impossible to get any muleteers to accompany us in that direction, and we were consequently obliged to pass to the south of the Qizil Uzun.

We crossed the river at Nimahil, a village of about thirty houses, with large fruit gardens, rice, wheat, and barley cultivation. The following is an extract from my diary of 2 June 1920: "The people of Nimahil seem more cheery and affable than the beasts of Barandaq, and understand some Persian. We sat under big plane trees — it was cooler than we had expected down at the bottom of this deep valley — until the men who work the kalak (raft) were reported ready. We then went through the gardens to the river-bank, which we followed upstream for  mile. On the left bank was a strip of mulberry trees and crops, on the right barren scale and cliff, rising steeply from the water's edge. The big turbid torrent of the Qizil Uzun, some 50 yards wide and flowing at 6 or 7 miles an hour, looked very formidable, while a heavy thunderstorm increased the dreary desolation of the scene. The raftsmen did not arrive until the storm was over, and were not ready to get to work before 4.30. The raft consists of a framework of wooden bars, about 12 feet long by 6 feet wide, with twelve inflated sheepskins fastened underneath, manipulated by one or two men with paddles. At each crossing it is swept some 160 yards downstream, and has to be carried up the opposite bank and ferried across, the round trip taking about twenty minutes. It took in all ten trips to transport our kit, saddlery, etc. The skins leak rapidly and need constant inflation. It is altogether a very primitive and tedious concern, much inferior to the hide rafts employed on Himalayan rivers. Finally our horses and mules were driven into the river in a frightened herd. They all swam strongly and crossed without mishap, much to my relief, as this was an event I had been dreading for some days."

We bivouacked for the night on the right bank of the river, and next morning climbed steeply up to the edge of the tableland at about 4500 feet, and then very gradually over undulating hills to nearly 7000 feet, The distance across the ravine from tableland to tableland appears to be between 3 and 4 miles as the crow flies. We were thankful to be back on the uplands with the Qizil Uzun behind us. Our troubles however were not ended. Overtaken by a heavy thunderstorm in the evening, we had to take refuge in a verminous village perched on huge manure heaps, whence our muleteers took the opportunity of absconding with articles of our kit. Immobilized by lack of transport I rode off alone 40 miles next day to Zenjan; thanks to the assistance of the governor, I returned with seven excellent mules, and we were able to resume our journey.

We passed several villages, the largest of which is Qara Bulagh. It is typical of this part of Azerbaijan, with only a few poplar trees to relieve its nakedness, squalid, and much more primitive than the Persian villages of the Elburz. These districts, moreover, have suffered severely from the prevailing insecurity and were terribly ravaged by famine and sickness in 1917-18. Some villages are now almost deserted, and everywhere ruined houses attest the decrease of population.

From Qara Bulagh we continued to Kajal, on the side of a deep valley descending to the Qizil Uzun ravine, where we had the good fortune to be well received and hospitably entertained by the owner of a fort dominating the village. From Kajal I was able to visit the bridge of Pardalis. A trade route from Zenjin to Ardabil used to cross the Kizil Uzun by this bridge, but the two central spans were breached several years ago to prevent the Shahsavans, who live north of the river, crossing to loot on the right bank. The protection thus afforded is only very partial, as the river is fordable at several points during the low-water season.

A second trade route from Zenjan to Ardebil crossed the Qizil Uzun by a ferry and passed up the valley of the Shahrud to Hirabad. Both these trade routes were, however, entirely abandoned owing to the prevailing insecurity, and muleteers preferred to make a long détour viâ Mianeh. This increased lawlessness of the tribes has been one of the results of the Persian Revolution of 1906, the Constitutional Government in its early days having been quite unable to exercise authority over the tribesmen of Azerbaijan — and much less over those of Luristan and Southern Persia. It is only fair to add that the Swedish Gendarmerie established in 1911 had made considerable progress in pacifying the tribes of the south, but there, as in Azerbaijan the weakness and disorganization of the Persian Administration during the war had disastrous effects. Let us hope that Riza Khan may succeed in checking the raiding instincts of these rude tribesmen.

The ravine of the Qizil Uzun comes to an end some 8 miles above Pardalis, and the valley is wide and open as far as the junction of the rivers below Mianeh. Above this junction the river, now very much diminished in volume and very brackish from the salt springs in Garrus, is enclosed by a short gorge as far as the Qaplan Kuh Bridge on the road going north to Tabriz; thence upstream it traverses a more open country. We struck the road close to the bridge and followed it over the Qaplan Kuh to Mianeh, the limit of the Turkish advance which threatened to cut the British line of communications from Baghdad to the Caspian in the autumn of 1918.

The town has given its name to the bug, the "argas Persicus," with which it is infested. The popular name for these pests is "Gharibgaz," which means "Stranger-biter," as the inhabitants of the places he frequents become immune to the severe form of relapsing fever occasioned by his bite. One is generally warned of their presence and counselled to adopt the native form of inoculation of swallowing one of these bugs in a pill of dough!

We reached Mianeh in the afternoon to find the streets deserted, as it was the month of Ramazan, and the long fast from sunrise to sunset reduces the inhabitants to a state of inactivity during the day. It is an inconvenient season for travellers, as no business is transacted until evening, and food is obtainable only by special arrangement. In the country, however, the peasants continue their daily toil in the fields without breaking their fast and without quenching their thirst — a severe test of endurance under the brilliant Persian sunshine during the long June days.

Lack of time prevents me from describing the remainder of my journey from Mianeh up the Qizil Uzun to the borders of Garrus, and thence to Zinjan; and in part perhaps also lack of memory and inclination, for these last stages of my long journey were marred by heat, dust, flies, and sickness of man and beast. The grim gorges which the Qizil Uzun traverses through Khalkhal are less forbidding than the dreary open valley into which we descended some 12 miles upstream of the Qaplan Kuh bridge on the Mianeh road.

The view of this comparatively low-lying region about 3000 feet above sea-level — so extensive and so hideous in its desolation — brought home to me vividly the wonderful fertilizing effect of the gaunt mountain ranges which form elsewhere so prominent a feature of Persian landscape, as, for instance, at Hamadan. The background of snowy mountains looks so barren and inhospitable, but they are a benign influence to the country and its inhabitants by feeding its springs, whence perennial streams pour down throughout the rainless summer months to irrigate the cornfields and gardens of the plain.

The Qizil Uzun valley above the Qaplan Kuh bridge also suggests the thought, with which I will close my paper, of Persia as a land of contrasts: the contrast between the barrenness of low-lying waterless regions and the fertility of the soil when irrigated by streams fed from the mountain ranges; the contrast of climate between lowlands and highlands, between the heat and drought of summer and the winter's cold; the astonishing contrast between the climate and landscape of the Persian plateau and of the Caspian provinces beyond the Elburz; and lastly, the contrast of races inhabiting these regions, between Persian and Turk, between the stalwart peasantry of the mountains and of the plateau and the more reserved and furtive Gilakis and Mazandaranis of the Caspian Provinces.

Before the paper the PRESIDENT (the EARL OF RONALDSHAY) said: The war gave a curious twist to the course of the lives of many of us, and our lecturer this evening is no exception to that rule. It was, indeed, the war which wafted him, quite unexpectedly, first of all to India, then to Mesopotamia, and finally to that land of curious physical contrasts, the northern frontiers of Persia. It is rather more than twenty years since I travelled up from Baghdad to Tehran and, from what the lecturer tells me, I gather that there have been considerable developments, at any rate in the matter of road making, since those days. The old mule track, which used to meander up the mountain-side through the Zagros Gates on to the Persian plateau, appears to have been supplanted by a metalled road constructed, I understand, at great cost at the expense of the British tax-payer! But it is not so much of the tract of country between Baghdad and Tehran that we are to hear to-night as of those wonderful mountains which form the northern slopes of the Persian plateau and divide it from the Caspian Sea. That block of territory is far less known than the ordinary trade routes in Persia, and we look forward with great interest to the story which Captain Fortescue will have to tell us of his wanderings through that wooded or barren and mountainous country; and we look forward with equal pleasure to the pictures which he will show us of the remarkable scenery which that part of Asia provides. I have pleasure now in asking Captain Fortescue to give us his lecture.