Unless the father be very poor indeed, he makes a feast for his friends on an auspicious day, and invites the village mollahs. Sweetmeats are solemnly eaten after the guests have assembled. Then the infant, stiffened and mummied in its swaddling clothes, is brought in, and is laid on the floor by one of the mollahs. Five names are written on five slips of paper, which are placed between the leaves of the Koran, or under the edge of the carpet. The first chapter of the Koran is then read. One of the slips is then drawn at random, and a mollah takes up the child, and pronounces in its ear the name found upon it, after which he places the paper on its clothes.
The relations and friends give it presents according to their means, answering to our christening gifts, and thereafter it is called by the name it has received. Among men's names there is a preponderance of those taken from the Old Testament, among which Ibrahim, Ismail, Suleiman, Yusuf, and Moussa are prominent. Abdullah, Mahmoud, Hassan, Raouf, Baba Houssein, Imam are also common, and many names have the suffix of Ali among the Shiahs. Fatmeh is a woman's name, but girl-children usually receive the name of some flower or bird, or fascinating quality of disposition or person.
The journey is beginning to tell on men and animals. One of the Arab horses has had a violent attack of pain from the cold, and several of the men are ailing and depressed.
Dizabad, Feb. 11.—Nanej is the last village laid down on any map on the route we are taking for over a hundred miles, i.e. until we reach Kûm, though it is a caravan route, and it does not appear that any Europeans have published any account of it. Just now it is a buried country, for the snow is lying from one to four feet deep. It is not even possible to pronounce any verdict on the roads, for they are simply deep ruts in the snow, with "mule ladders." The people say that the plains are irrigated and productive, and that the hills pasture their sheep and cattle; and they all complain of the exactions of local officials. There is no variety in costume, and very little in dwellings, except as to size, for they are all built of mud or sun-dried bricks, within cattle yards, and have subterranean pens for cattle and goats. The people abound in diseases, specially of the eyes and bones.
The salient features of the hills, if they have any, are rounded off by snow, and though many of them rise to a great height, none are really impressive but Mount Elwand, close to Hamadan. The route is altogether hilly, but the track pursues valleys and low passes as much as possible, and is never really steep.
Yesterday we marched twenty-four miles in eight hours without any incident, and the "heavy division" took thirteen hours, and did not come in till ten at night! There are round hills, agglomerated into ranges, with easy passes, the highest 7026 feet in altitude, higher summits here and there in view, the hills encircling level plains, sprinkled sparsely with villages at a distance from the road, denoted by scrubby poplars and willows; sometimes there is a kanaat or underground irrigation channel with a line of pits or shafts, but whatever there was, or was not, it was always lonely, grim, and desolate. The strong winds have blown some of the hillsides bare, and they appear in all their deformity of shapeless mounds of black gravel, or black mud, with relics of last year's thistles and euphorbias upon them. So great is the destitution of fuel that even now people are out cutting the stalks of thistles which appear above the snow.
As the hours went by, I did rather wish for the smashed kajawehs, especially when we met the ladies of a governor's haram, to the number of thirty, reclining snugly in pairs, among blankets and cushions, in panniers with tilts, and curtains of a thick material, dyed Turkey red. The cold became very severe towards evening.
The geographical interest of the day was that we crossed the watershed of the region, and have left behind the streams which eventually reach the sea, all future rivers, however great their volume, or impetuous their flow, disappearing at last in what the Americans call "sinks," but which are known in Persia as kavirs, usually salt swamps. Near sunset we crossed a bridge of seven pointed arches with abutments against a rapid stream, and passing a great gaunt caravanserai on an eminence, and a valley to the east of the bridge with a few villages giving an impression of fertility, hemmed in by some shapely mountains, we embarked on a level plain, bounded on all sides by hills so snowy that not a brown patch or outbreak of rock spotted their whiteness, and with villages and caravanserais scattered thinly over it. On the left, there are the extensive ruins of old Dizabad, and a great tract of forlorn graves clustering round a crumbling imamzada.
As the sun sank the distant hills became rose-flushed, and then one by one the flush died off into the paleness of death, and in the gathering blue-grayness, in desolation without sublimity, in ghastliness, impressive but only by force of ghastliness, and in benumbing cold, we rode into this village, and into a yard encumbered with mighty piles of snow, on one side of which I have a wretched room, though the best, with two doors, which do not shut, but when they are closed make it quite dark—a deep, damp, cobwebby, dusty, musty lair like a miserable eastern cowshed.
I was really half-frozen and quite benumbed, and though I had plenty of blankets and furs, had a long and severe chill, and another to-day. M—— also has had bad chills, and the Afghan orderly is ill, and moaning with pain in the next room. Hadji has fallen into a state of chronic invalidism, and is shaking with chills, his teeth chattering, and he is calling on Allah whenever I am within hearing.