I was delighted with the oasis of Sahmine. It has abundant water for irrigation, which means abundant fertility. Its walnut trees are magnificent, and its gardens are filled with noble fruit trees. The wheat harvest was being brought in, and within the walls it was difficult to find a place to camp on, for all the open spaces were threshing-floors, piled with sheaves of wheat and mounds of kah, in the midst of which oxen in spans of two were threshing. That is, they drew machines like heavy wood sleds, with transverse revolving wooden rollers set with iron fans at different angles, which cut the straw to pieces. A great heap of unbound sheaves is in the centre, and from this men throw down the stalked ears till they come up to the bodies of the oxen, adding more as fast as the straw is trodden down. A boy sits on the car and keeps the animals going in a circle hour after hour with a rope and a stick. The foremost oxen are muzzled. The grain falls out during this process.
On a windy day the great heaps are tossed into the air on a fork, the straw is carried for a short distance, and the grain falling to the ground is removed and placed in great clay jars in the living-rooms of the houses. All the villages are now surrounded with mounds of kah which will be stored before snow comes. The dustiness of this winnowing process is indescribable. I was nearly smothered with it in Sahmine, and on windy days each village is enveloped in a yellow dust storm.
Sahmine, though it has many ruinous buildings, has much building going on. It has large houses with balakhanas, a Khan's fort with many houses inside, a square with fine trees and a stream, and a place with a stream, where madder-red dyers were at work, and there are five small mosques and imamzadas. The gardens are quite beautiful, and it is indeed a very attractive village.
The people also were attractive and friendly. After the ketchuda's official visit the Khan's wives called, and pressed me very hospitably to leave my tent and live with them, and when I refused they sent me a dinner of Persian dishes with sweetmeats made by their own hands. The kabobs were quite appetising. They are a favourite Persian dish, made of pieces of seasoned meat roasted on skewers, and served very hot, between flaps of very hot bread. Each bit of meat is rubbed with an onion before being put on the skewer, and a thin slice of tail fat is put between every two pieces. The cooks show great art in the rapidity with which they rotate a skewer full of kabobs over a fierce charcoal fire.
In the evening, at the ketchuda's request, I held a "reception" outside my tent, and it was a very pleasant, merry affair. Several of the people brought their children, and the little things behaved most graciously. It is very pleasant to see the devotion of the men to them. I told them that in England many of our people are so poor that instead of children being welcome they are regarded ruefully as additional "mouths to feed." "Ah," said the ketchuda, a handsome Seyyid, "your land is then indeed under the curse of God. We would like ten children at once, they are the joy of our lives." Other men followed, expatiating on the delights of having children to pet and play with on their return from work.
Sahmine not only dyes and prints cottons, but it exports wheat, barley, opium, cotton, and fruit, and appears a more important and prosperous place than Daulatabad, the capital of the district.
The fine valley between Sahmine and Daulatabad is irrigated by a kanaat and canals, and is completely cultivated, bearing heavy crops of wheat, cotton, tobacco, opium, bringals, and castor oil. The wheat is now being carried to the villages on asses' backs in great nets, lashed to six-foot poles placed in front and behind, each pole being kept steady by a man.
The heat on that march was severe. A heavy heat-haze hung over the distances, vegetation drooped, my mock sowar wrapped up his head in his abba, the horses looked limp, the harvesters slept under the trees, the buffaloes lay down in mud and water. Even the greenery of the extensive gardens in and around Daulatabad scarcely looked cool.
Daulatabad is a walled city of 4500 souls, has a fort, and is reputed to have a large garrison. The bazars, which contain 250 shops, are indifferent, and the five caravanserais wretched. It and its extensive gardens occupy the eastern extremity of a plain, and lie very near the steep rocky mountain Sard Kuh, through which, by the Tang-i-Asnab, the Tihran road passes. Another road over the shoulder of the mountain goes to Isfahan. The plain outside the walls has neither tree nor bush, and was only brought into cultivation two years ago. The harvest was carried, and as irrigation had been suspended for some weeks, there was nothing but a yellow expanse of short thin stubble and blazing gravel.
There was no space for camping in any available garden, and an hour was spent in finding a camping-ground with wholesome water on the burning plain before mentioned. I camped below a terraced and planted eminence, on which a building, half fort and half governor's house, has so recently been erected that it has not had time to become ruinous. It is an imposing quadrangle with blank walls, towers with windows at the corners, and a very large balakhana over the entrance. A winding carriage-drive, well planted, leads up to it, and there is a circular band-stand with a concrete floor and a fountain. The most surprising object was a new pair-horse landau, standing under a tree. Barracks are being built just below the house.