Since leaving the Karun very few horses have been seen, and the few have been of a very inferior class. Even Yahya Khan, who has the reputation of being rich, rode a horse not superior to a common pack animal. The people we have been among lately have no horses or mares, the men walk, and the loads are carried on cows and asses.
In the greater part of this country I have not seen a mule, with the exception of some mule foals on a high pass near Ali-kuh. The Bakhtiaris breed mules, however, and sell them in Isfahan in the spring, but rarely use them for burden. They breed horses in some places, exporting the colts and keeping the fillies. Their horses are small and not good-looking, but are wiry and enduring, and as surefooted as mules. In fact they will go anywhere. One check on the breeding of good horses is that, when a man has a good foal, he is often compelled to make a present of it to any superior who fancies it.
The horses are shod, as in Persia proper, with thin iron plates covering nearly the whole hoof, secured by six big-headed nails. Reared in camps and among children, they are perfectly gentle and scarcely require breaking. A good Bakhtiari horse can be bought for £6 or £8. A good mule is worth from £7 to £11. Asses are innumerable, and are used for transporting baggage, equally with oxen and small cows. A good donkey can be bought for 30s.
The goats are very big and long-haired. The sheep, which nearly always are like the goats brown or black, and very tall, are invariably of the breed with the great pendulous tails, which sometimes weigh nearly eight pounds. They give a great deal of milk, and it is on this, not on cows' milk, that the people rely for the greater part of their food, their cheese, curds, mast, and roghan.
The goat-skins are invaluable to them. They use them for holding water and milk, and as churns for their butter. They make all their tents, their tent carpets, and their sacks for holding wool of goat's-hair, woven on rude portable looms.
The female costume changed at Shahbadar. The women now wear loose garments like nightgowns, open to the waist, and reaching from the neck to the feet, and red trousers, tight below the knee, but rarely visible below the outer dress. Their notion of ornament consists in having a branch or frond tattooed up the throat.
These tribes breed cattle extensively. One camp possessed over 300 young beasts. The calves are nourished by their mothers up to two years old. They have a few white angora goats of great beauty, but the majority are black and are valued chiefly for their milk and for their long coarse hair.
A march through fierce heat at a low level brought us at noon to the village of Imamzada-i-Mamil. The road, after continuing along the same wooded valley, which in a happier climate would be called a glen, emerges on scenery truly "park-like," softly-outlined hills covered with buff grass, and wooded on their gently-curved slopes with oak and hawthorn, fringing off into clumps and single trees. Smooth broad valleys, first of buff pasture, and then of golden wheat or green maize, lie among the hills. All is soft and lowland, and was bathed that day in a dreamy blue heat haze. Not a mountain rose above the gently-curved hills which were painted in soft blue on the sky of the distant horizon. The natural wood ceased. The surroundings underwent an abrupt change. Is it a change for the better, I wonder? Three months and a week have been spent in zigzagging among some of the loftiest mountains and deepest valleys of Persia, and they now lie behind, among the things that were. In fact, Khuramabad, from which I write, is not only out of the Bakhtiari country, but the Bakhtiari Lurs are left behind, and we are among the fierce and undisciplined tribes of the Feili Lurs.
The baggage animals were not dubious, as I am, as to the advantages of the change. When we reached the open, Cock o' the Walk threw up his beautiful head, knocked down the man who led him, and with a joyous neigh set off at a canter, followed by all the mules and horses, some cantering, some trotting, regardless of their loads, and regardless of everything, proceeding irresponsibly, almost knocking one out of the saddle by striking one with the sharp edges of yekdans and tent poles, till they were headed off by mounted men, after which some of them rolled, loads and all, on the soft buff grass. This escapade shows what condition they are in after three months of hard mountain work.
Reaching the village at noon, we halted till moonrise at midnight on an eminence with some fine plane and walnut trees upon it above a stream which issues from below an imamzada on a height, and passes close to a graveyard. Possibly this contaminates the water, for there has been a great outbreak of diphtheria, which has been very fatal. It is quite a small village, but thirteen children suffering from the most malignant form of the malady, some of them really dying at the time, were brought to me during the afternoon, as well as some people ill of what appeared to be typhoid fever. One young creature, very ill, was carried three miles on her father's back, though I had sent word that I would call and see her at night. She died a few hours later of the exhaustion brought on by the journey. The mercury that afternoon reached 103° in the shade.