Persians always use round numbers, and the ketchuda says that the village has 300 Persian houses, and 100 more, inhabited during the winter by Ilyats. It has mud walls with towers at intervals, two mosques, a clear stream of water in the principal street, some very good houses with balakhanas, and narrow alleys between high mud walls, in which are entrances into courtyards occupied by animals, and surrounded by living-rooms. The only trees are a few spindly willows, but wheat comes up to the walls, and at sunset great herds of cattle and myriads of brown sheep converge to what seems quite a prosperous village.
May 5.—Yesterday, Sunday, was intended to be a day of rest, but turned out very far from it. After the last relay of "patients" left on Saturday evening, and the last medicines had been "dispensed," my tent was neatly arranged with one yekdan for a table, and the other for a washstand and medicine stand. The latter trunk contained some English gold in a case along with some valuable letters, and some bags, in which were 1000 krans, for four months' travelling. This yekdan was padlocked. It was a full moon, the other camps were quite near, all looked very safe, and I slept until awakened by the sharpness of the morning air.
Then I saw but one yekdan where there had been two! Opening the tent curtain I found my washing apparatus and medicine bottles neatly arranged on the ground outside, and the trunk without its padlock among some ruins a short distance off. The money bags were all gone, leaving me literally penniless. Most of my store of tea was taken, but nothing else. Two men must have entered my tent and have carried the trunk out. Of what use are any precautions when one sleeps so disgracefully soundly? When the robbery was made known horsemen were sent off to the Ilkhani, whose guest I have been since I entered his territory, and at night a Khan arrived with a message that "the money would be repaid, and that the village would be levelled with the ground!" Kahva Rukh will, I hope, stand for many years to come, but the stolen sum will be levied upon it, according to custom.
The people are extremely vexed at this occurrence, and I would rather have lost half the sum than that it should have happened to a guest. In addition to an escort of a Khan and four men, the Ilkhani has given orders that we are not to be allowed to pay for anything while in the country. This order, after several battles, I successfully disobey. This morning, before any steps were taken to find the thief, and after all the loads were ready, officials came to the camps, and, by our wish, every man's baggage was unrolled and searched. Our servants and charvadars are all Moslems, and each of them took an oath on the Koran, administered by a mollah, that he was innocent of the theft.
Ardal, May 9.—I left rather late, and with the blue horseman, to whom suspicion generally pointed, rode to Shamsabad, partly over gravelly wastes, passing two mixed Moslem and Armenian villages on a plain, on which ninety ploughs were at work on a stiff whitish soil.
Shamsabad is a most wretched mud village without supplies, standing bare on a gravelly slope, above a clear quiet stream, an affluent of the Karun. This country has not reached that stage of civilisation in which a river bears the same name from mouth to source, and as these streams usually take as many names as there are villages on their course, I do not burden my memory with them. There is a charming camping-ground of level velvety green sward on the right bank of the river, with the towering mass of Jehanbin (sight of the world), 12,000 feet high, not far off. This lawn is 6735 feet above the sea, and the air keen and pleasant. The near mountain views are grand, and that evening the rare glory of a fine sunset lingered till it was merged in the beauty of a perfect moonlight.
After leaving Shamsabad the road passes through a rather fine defile, crosses the Shamsabad stream by a ten-arched bridge between the Kuh-i-Zangun and the Kuh-i-Jehanbin, and proceeds down a narrow valley now full of wild flowers and young wheat to Khariji, a village of fifty houses, famous for the excellent quality of its opium. From Khariji we proceeded through low grassy hills, much like the South Downs, and over the low but very rough Pasbandi Pass into an irrigated valley in which is the village of Shalamzar. I rode through it alone quite unmolested, but two days later the Sahib, passing through it with his servants, was insulted and pelted, and the people said, "Here's another of the dog party." These villagers are afflicted with "divers diseases and torments," and the crowd round my tent was unusually large and importunate. In this village of less than fifty houses nearly all the people had one or both eyes more or less affected, and fourteen had only one eye.
Between Shalamzar and Ardal lies the lofty Gardan-i-Zirreh, by which the Kuh-i-Sukhta is crossed at a height of 8300 feet. The ascent begins soon after leaving the village, and is long and steep—a nasty climb. The upper part at this date is encumbered with snow, below which primulas are blooming in great profusion, and lower down leathery flowers devoid of beauty cover without adorning the hillside. Two peasants went up with me, and from time to time kindly handed me clusters of small raisins taken from the breasts of dirty felt clothing. On reaching the snow I found Rustem Khan's horse half-buried in a drift, so I made the rest of the ascent on foot. The snow was three feet deep, but for the most part presented no difficulties, even to the baggage animals.
At the summit there were no green things except some plants of artemisia, not even a blade of grass, but among the crevices appeared small fragile snow-white tulips with yellow centres, mixed with scarlet and mauve blossoms of a more vigorous make. At that great height the air was keen and bracing, and to eyes for months accustomed to regions buried in dazzling snow and to glaring gravelly wastes, there was something perfectly entrancing about the view on the Bakhtiari side. Though treeless, it looked like Paradise. Lying at the foot of the pass is the deep valley of Seligun, 8000 feet high, with the range of the Kuh-i-Nassar to the south, and of the Kuh-Shah-Purnar to the north—green, full of springs and streams, with two lakes bringing down the blue of heaven to earth, with slopes aflame with the crimson and terra-cotta Fritillaria imperialis, and levels one golden glory with a yellow ranunculus. Rich and dark was the green of the grass, tall and deep on the plain, but when creeping up the ravines to meet the snows, short green sward enamelled with tulips. Great masses of naked rock, snow-slashed, and ranges of snow-topped masses behind and above, walled in that picture of cool serenity, its loneliness only broken by three black tents of Ilyats far away. So I saw Seligun, but those who see it a month hence will find only a brown and dusty plain!
The range we crossed divides the Chahar Mahals from the true Bakhtiari country, a land of mountains which rumour crests with eternal snow, of unexplored valleys and streams, of feudal chiefs, of blood feuds, and of nomad tribes moving with vast flocks and herds.