Our new host proved an agreeable companion, and spoke very sensibly, with a remarkable freedom from the bombast and gesticulation the modern Persian so much delights to display. I learned from him that he was connected with the Sháh by marriage with a sister of the Queen-mother, and that he had been on this frontier for many years. In the time of Kamrán of Herat, he accompanied Mír Asadullah of Gháyn in his retreat to Sistan, and spent two years at Chilling and Sihkoha. More recently, four years ago, he met Yácúb Khán at Mashhad, and subsequently his father, the present Amir Sher Ali, at Herat. He made some pointed inquiries regarding Sistan and the boundary question, but on finding they were not acceptable, adroitly turned the conversation to the more ephemeral, and perhaps to himself more congenial, topic of wines, their varieties and qualities; and his familiarity with the names at least of the common English wines and spirits not a little surprised me. He expressed concern at finding that we were travelling without a store of these creature comforts, and very good-naturedly procured us a small supply of home-distilled arrack from Gúnábád. It proved very acceptable, for our own supplies had been long since exhausted; and Mr Rozario, who superintended our mess arrangements, cleverly converted it into very palatable punch, of which a little was made to go a great way.
But to return from this digression to our march. We had set out with the baggage in a closely-packed column, with matchlockmen in front and rear, and ourselves with a dozen horsemen leading the advance, for the dread of Turkmans was still upon us. We had proceeded thus about seven miles, passing the castellated hamlets of Iddo and Isfyán in picturesque little nooks of the hills on our left, when we turned a projecting spur and suddenly came upon a wide ravine, beyond which were the gardens and poppy-fields of Calát. Leaving the baggage to proceed ahead, we turned off up the course of the ravine to a clump of trees at its spring-head for breakfast. Our sudden appearance and martial array, for we were five or six and twenty horsemen all more or less armed, struck the villagers with a panic. Five or six of the boldest advanced into the mulberry plantations and fired their matchlocks at us, but the rest, shouting “Alaman! alaman!” “Raiders! raiders!” scrambled up the steep slopes of the slate hill backing the town as fast as their limbs would carry them. A bullet whistling by our mihmandár with a disagreeably close “whish,” sent him and his two attendants full gallop towards the village, vowing all sorts of vengeance on the pidri sokhtas, who could mistake their own governor and a party of respectable gentlemen for the marauding Turkmans, on whom be the curse of ’Ali and Muhammad. Ourselves meanwhile proceeded towards the clump of trees ahead. Here we came upon a watermill. The people occupied in it, disturbed by the firing, rushed out just in time to be confronted by us. If the devil himself with all his host had faced them, they could not have evinced greater fear, nor more activity to escape his clutches. There were four of them, all dusty and powdered with flour, and they were up the hillside in a trice, going on all fours, so steep was the slope, like monkeys. The sight was absurdly ridiculous, and sent us into fits of laughter. Anon the fugitives stopped to take breath, and turning their heads, looked down on us with fear and amazement expressed on their faces. We beckoned them, called them, and laughed at them. They only scrambled up higher, and again looked down mistrustfully at us. Presently our mihmandár rejoined us with two or three of the villagers, who looked very crestfallen at this exposure of weakness, and excused themselves as well they might on the grounds of the frequent raids by the Turkmans they were subjected to. On seeing us in friendly converse with their fellows, the startled millers slided down from their retreat, and brought with them as a peace-offering some rhubarb-stalks, the plants of which covered the hillside. A general dispensation of kráns and half-kráns soon put us on the most amicable terms, and restored a thorough confidence.
The scene was altogether too absurd and unexpected to suppress the momentary merriment it produced, yet it furnishes a subject for melancholy reflection, as illustrating the state of insecurity in which these people live. Another fact of a yet more painful nature revealed by this amusing incident was the frightful state of desolation and poverty to which this village had been reduced by the combined effects of famine and rapine. The alarm produced by our sudden appearance had brought out the whole population on the hillside, and at a rough guess they did not exceed eighty men and women, and not a single child was seen amongst them. On resuming our march we passed through the village. It contains about two hundred and fifty houses, but most of them are untenanted and falling to decay. The people were miserably poor and dejected, and looked very sickly. Yet the village is surrounded by gardens and mulberry plantations, which, in their spring foliage, give the place an air of comfort and prosperity by no means in accordance with its real condition.
Calát, indeed, like many another village our journey brought us to, in interior condition quite belied its exterior appearance. I may here state in anticipation, that in all our march from Gháyn to the Persian capital we hardly anywhere saw infants or very young children. They had nearly all died in the famine. We nowhere heard the sound of music nor song nor mirth in all the journey up to Mashhad. We passed through village after village, each almost concealed from view in the untrimmed foliage of its gardens, only to see repetitions of misery, melancholy, and despair. The suffering produced by this famine baffles description, and exceeds our untutored conceptions. In this single province of Khorassan the loss of population by this cause is estimated at 120,000 souls, and over the whole kingdom cannot be less than a million and a half.
Beyond Calát our path followed the hill skirt in a north-west direction. The surface is very stony, and covered with wild rhubarb and the yellow rose in great profusion, to the exclusion of other vegetation. We passed the villages of Sághí, Kochi, Zaharabad, and Shirazabad, and then crossing a deep ravine in which flowed a brisk little stream draining into the central rivulet of Gúnábád, passed over some undulating ground to Zihbad, where we camped.
15th April.—Zihbad to Bijistan, twenty-eight miles, and halt a day. Our route was N.N.W., skirting the hill range on our left by a rough stony path. We passed in succession the villages of Brezú, Kásum, and Sinoh, each continuous with the other, through a wide stretch of fruit gardens, mulberry plantations, poppy beds, and corn-fields watered from a number of brisk little hill streams, and looking the picture of a prosperity which our experience has taught us is very far from the reality.
A little farther on, at about the eleventh mile, we came to Patinjo, and halted for breakfast under the shade of a magnificent plane-tree in the centre of the village. Proceeding hence, we continued along the hill skirt, and at about four miles entered amongst the hills that close the Gúnábád valley to the northward. We gained their shelter in a somewhat hurried manner, owing to a false alarm of Turkmans on the plain flanking our right. We had continued to hear all sorts of fanciful and exaggerated reports of these gentry, founded undoubtedly on a basis of fact, and were consequently kept alive to the chance of a possible encounter with them. On the present occasion a cloud of dust suddenly appeared round a spur projecting on the plain about two miles to our right. Our mihmandár reined up a moment, looking intently at the suspicious object, and shook his head. At this moment the cloud of dust wheeled round in our direction. “Yá Ali!” he exclaimed. “They are Turkmans. Get on quick into the hills;” and so saying, he unslung his rifle, and loaded as he galloped. A few minutes brought us all to the hills, and ascending some heights overlooking the plain, we levelled our glasses at the cause of our commotion. After a good deal of spying and conjecturing, we discovered, to our no small chagrin, that we were no better than our friends of Calát, for our would-be Turkmans were no other than a flock of goats and sheep, grazing along the hill skirts for protection against surprise by those very marauders.
Our road through the hills was by a winding path, over ridges and through defiles, everywhere rough and stony, and in some parts very wild and rugged.
After passing the castellated village of Kámih we came to a very difficult little gorge between bare rocks of trap, and farther on reached a watershed called Gudari Rúdi, or “the pass of the tamarisk river.” It runs north and south, and is about 5150 feet above the sea. The descent is gradual, by a long drainage gully between gradually diverging hills. At five miles from the watershed we turned to the left across a wide gravelly waste to Bijistan, where we camped near a sarae outside the town. As we approached camp, along the eastern side of this waste, we had the pleasure of seeing a long string of camels with our heavy baggage from Birjand converging to the sarae spot on the western side.
Bijistan is one of the principal towns of the Tabbas district, and contains about two thousand houses surrounded by gardens. It is a charming spot in this wilderness of barren hills and desert wastes, and lies at the base of an isolated ridge of hills, beyond which, to the west, is seen, down in a hollow, portion of the great salt desert of Yazd and Káshán. It is called Kavír, and its surface is of dazzling whiteness from saline encrustations.