Mehemet Ali, a new and undesirable acquisition, was loaded with my shuldari, and we clambered down the hillside, leading our horses amidst tamarisk scrub and a glory of tulips, till we reached the level, when a gallop brought us to the camps, pitched near a vigorous spring in the green flower-enamelled grass.
That halt was luxury for man and beast. Later the air was cool and moist. The sun-lit white fleeces which had been rolling among the higher hills darkened and thickened into rain-clouds, drifting stormily, and only revealing here and there through their rifts glimpses of blue. A few flocks of sheep on the mountains, and the mules and horses revelling knee-deep in the juicy grass, were the sole representatives of animated life. It was a real refreshment to be away from the dust of mud villages, and to escape from the pressure of noisy and curious crowds, and the sight of sore eyes.
Towards evening, a gallop on the Arabs with the Bakhtiari escort took us to the camp of the lately-arrived Ilyats. Orientals spend much of their time in the quiet contemplation of cooking pots, and these nomads were not an exception, for they were all sitting round a brushwood fire, on which the evening meal of meat broth with herbs was being prepared. The women were unveiled. Both men and women are of quite a different type from the Persians. They are completely clothed and in appearance are certainly only semi-savages. These tents consisted of stones rudely laid to a height of two feet at the back, over which there is a canopy with an open front and sides, of woven goat's-hair supported on poles. Such tents are barely a shelter from wind and rain, but in them generations of Ilyats are born and die, despising those of their race who settle in villages.
There were great neutral-tint masses of rolling clouds, great banks of glistering white clouds, a cold roystering wind, a lurid glow, and then a cloudy twilight. Hakīm threw up his heels and galloped over the moist grass, the Bakhtiaris, two on one horse, laughed and yelled—there was the desert freedom without the desert. It was the most inspiriting evening I have spent in Persia. Truth compels me to add that there were legions of black flies.
In the early morning, after riding round the south-east end of the valley, we passed by the lake Seligun or Albolaki, banked up by a revetment of rude masonry. The wind was strong, and drove the foam-flecked water in a long line of foam on the shore. Red-legged storks were standing in a row fishing. Cool scuds of rain made the morning homelike. Then there was a hill ascent, from which the view of snowy mountains, gashed by deep ravines and backed by neutral-tint clouds, was magnificent, and then a steep and rocky defile, which involved walking, its sides gaudy with the Fritillaria imperialis, which here attains a size and a depth of colouring of which we have no conception.
In this pass we met a large number of Ilyat families going up to their summer quarters, with their brown flocks of sheep and their black flocks of goats. Their tents with all their other goods were packed in convenient parcels on small cows, and the women with babies and big wooden cradles were on asses. The women without babies, the elder children, and the men walked.
Whatever beauty these women possessed was in the Meg Merrilees style, with a certain weirdness about it. They had large, dark, long eyes, with well-marked eyebrows, artificially prolonged, straight prominent noses, wide mouths with thin lips, long straight chins, and masses of black hair falling on each side of the face. Their dress consisted of enormously full dark blue cotton trousers, drawn in at the ankles, and suspended over the hips, not from the waist (the invariable custom in Persia), and loose sleeved vests, open in front. The adult women all wear a piece of cotton pinned on the head, and falling over the back and shoulders. The men had their hair in many long plaits, hanging from under felt skull-caps, and wore wide blue cotton trousers, white or printed cotton shirts over these, and girdles in which they carried knives, pipes, and other indispensables. All wore shoes or sandals of some kind. These men were very swarthy, but the younger women had rich brunette complexions, and were unveiled.
Some bad horse-fights worried the remainder of the march, which included the ascent of an anemone-covered hill, 7700 feet high, from which we got the first view of the Ardal valley, much cultivated, till it narrows and is lost among mountains, now partly covered with snow. In the centre is a large building with a tower, the spring residence of the Ilkhani, whose goodwill it is necessary to secure. Through a magnificent gorge in the mountains passes the now famous Karun. A clatter of rain and a strong wind greeted our entrance into the valley, where we were met by some horsemen from the Ilkhani.
The great Ardal plateau is itself treeless, though the lower spurs of the Kuh-i-Sabz on the south side are well wooded with the belut, a species of oak. There is much cultivation, and at this season the uncultivated ground is covered with the great green leaves of a fodder plant, the Centaurea alata, which a little later are cut, dried, and stacked. The rivers of the plateau are the Karun and Sabzu on the south side, and the river of Shamsabad, which brings to the Karun the drainage of the Chahar Mahals, and enters the valley through a magnificent tang or chasm on its north side, called Darkash Warkash. The village of Ardal is eighty-five miles from Isfahan, on the Shuster caravan route, and is about 200 from Shuster. Its altitude is 5970 feet, its Long. 50° 50′ E. and its Lat. 32° N.
On arriving here the grandeur of the Ilkhani's house faded away. Except for the fortified tower it looks like a second-rate caravanserai. The village, such as there is of it, is crowded on a steep slope outside the "Palace." 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.