Looking from above upon a plain, the poplars which surround villages where there is a sufficiency of water attract the eye. At this season they are nothing but a brown patch on the snow. The villages themselves are of light brown mud, and are surrounded usually by square walls with towers at the corners, and all have a great gate. Within the houses or hovels the families are huddled irregularly, with all their appurtenances, and in winter the flocks and herds are in subterranean pens beneath. In summer the animals go forth at sunrise and return at sunset. The walls, which give most of the villages a fortified aspect, used to afford the villagers a degree of protection against the predatory Turkomans, and now give security to the flocks against Lur and other robbers.
Every village has its ketchuda or headman, who is answerable for the taxes, the safety of travellers, and other matters.
Siashan, Feb. 16.—The men being a little better, we left Saruk at nine on the 14th, I on a bright little Baghdadi horse, in such good case that he frequently threw up his heels in happy playfulness. The temperature had fallen considerably, there had been a fresh snowfall, and the day was very bright. The Arab horses are suffering badly in their eyes from the glare of the snow.
If I had not had such a lively little horse I should have found the march a tedious one, for we were six hours in doing eleven and a half miles on a level! The head charvadar had gone on early to make some arrangements, and the others loaded the animals so badly that Hadji and the cook rolled off their mules into the deep semi-frozen slush from the packs turning just outside the gates. We had three mules with us with worn-out tackle, and the loads rolled over many times, the riders, who were too weak to help themselves, getting bad falls. As each load, owing to the broken tackle, took fifteen minutes to put on again, and the men could do little, a great deal of hard, exasperating work fell on M——. After one bad fall in a snowdrift myself, I rode on alone with one mule with a valuable burden. This, turning for the fourth time, was soon under his body, and he began to kick violently, quite dismaying me by the bang of his hoofs against cases containing scientific instruments. It was a droll comedy in the snow. I wanted to get hold of his halter, but every time I went near him he whisked round and flung up his heels, till I managed to cut the ragged surcingle and set him free, when I caught him in deep snow, in which my horse was very unwilling to risk himself.
Soon after leaving Saruk, which, as I mentioned before, is famous for very fine carpets, we descended gently upon the great plain of Feraghan, perhaps the largest carpet-producing district of Persia. These carpets are very fine and their patterns are unique, bringing a very high price. This plain has an altitude of about 7000 feet, is 45 miles in length by from 8 to 15 in breadth, is officially stated to have 650 villages upon it, all agricultural and carpet producing, and is considerably irrigated by streams, which eventually lose themselves in a salt lake at its eastern extremity. It is surrounded by hills, with mountain ranges behind them, and must be, both as to productiveness and population, one of the most flourishing districts in Persia.
We were to have marched to Kashgird, but on reaching the hamlet of Ahang Garang I found that Abbas Khan had taken quarters there, saying that Kashgird was in ruins.
Hadji, who had allowed himself to roll off several times, was moaning and weeping on the floor of my room, groaning out, with many cries of Ya Allah, "Let me stay here till I'm better; I don't want any wages; I shall be killed, oh, killed! Oh, my family! I shall never see Bushire any more!" Though there was much reason to think he was shamming, I did the little that he calls his "work," and left him to smoke his opium pipe and sleep by the fire in peace.
I was threatened with snow-blindness in one eye; in fact I saw nothing with it, and had to keep it covered up. One of the charvadars lay moaning outside my room, poor fellow, taking chlorodyne every half-hour, and another had got a bad foot from frost-bite. They have been terribly exposed, and the soft snow at a higher temperature has been worse for them than the dry powdery snow at a low temperature, as it soaks their socks, shoes, and leggings, and then freezes. Making Liebig's beef tea warms one, and they like it even from a Christian hand. The Afghan orderly bore up bravely, but was very weak. Indeed the prospect of getting these men to Tihran is darkening daily.
My room, though open to the snow at one end, was comfortable. The oven had been lighted twelve hours before, and it was delightful to hang one's feet into the warm hole. There were holes for light in the roof, and cold though it was, so long as daylight lasted these were never free from veiled faces looking down.
In order to become thoroughly warm it was necessary to walk long and briskly on the roof, and this brought all the villagers below it to stare the stare of vacuity rather than of curiosity. A snow scene is always beautiful at sunset, and this was exceptionally so, as the long indigo shadows on the plain threw into greater definiteness the gleaming, glittering hills, at one time dazzling in the sunshine, at another flushed in the sunset. The plain of Feraghan as seen from the roof was one smooth expanse of pure deep snow, broken only by brown splashes, where mud villages were emphasised by brown poplars, the unbroken, unsullied snow, two feet deep on the level and any number in the drifts, looking like a picture of the Arctic Ocean, magnificent in its solitude, one difficult track, a foot wide, the solitary link with the larger world which then seemed so very far away.