From Pole to Pole: A Book for Young People

by Sven Anders Hedin

MAP SHOWING (a) JOURNEY FROM CONSTANTINOPLE TO TEHERAN (pp. [26-33]); (b) LATTER PART OF JOURNEY TO BAKU (pp. [34-35]); AND (c) JOURNEY FROM BAKU ACROSS PERSIA TO BAGHDAD AND BACK TO TEHERAN (pp. [37-45]).

Here there is a complete change. During the first days after leaving the coast, we had driven through a beautiful and constantly changing landscape. We had passed through woods of coniferous trees and among rustling foliage of yellow leaves. Sometimes we had been hundreds of feet above an abyss, at the foot of which a bluish-green stream foamed between rounded rocks. Beside the road we had seen rows of villages and farms, with houses and verandahs of wood, where Turks sat comfortably in their shops and cafés; and we had met many small caravans of horses, asses, and oxen carrying hay, fruit, and bricks between the villages. We always began our day's march in the early morning, for the nights were mild and the sun had scarcely risen before it felt pleasant.

But up here on the plateau it is different. No firs adorn the mountain flanks, no foliaged trees throw their shade over the road. No creaking carts, laden with timber and drawn by buffaloes and oxen, enliven the way. The villages are scattered, and the houses are low cabins of stone or sun-dried clay. The Turkish population is blended with Armenians. The road becomes worse and more neglected as the traffic falls off. The air is cool, and there are several degrees of frost in the night.

When we have passed Erzerum, where the Christian churches of the Armenians stand side by side with the mosques of the Turks, we journey, as it were, on a flat roof sloping down slightly on three sides, each with a gutter leading into its own water-butt. These water-butts are the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea, and the Persian Gulf, and they are always big enough to hold all the water, however hard it may rain on the stony roof which rises between Caucasia, Asia Minor, and Mesopotamia. The gutters are, of course, the rivers, the greatest of which is the Euphrates.

Now the road is very bad. There has been rain in the autumn; and now that it is freezing, the mud, all cut up by deep wheel-ruts, is as hard as stone. My vehicle shakes and jolts me hither and thither and up and down, and when we arrive at the village where we are to pass the night, I feel bruised all over. Shakir makes tea and boils eggs, and after supper I roll myself in my cloak and go to sleep.

It is pitch-dark when I am called, and still dark when we make a start by the light of lanterns. After a little a curious sound is heard across the plain. The clang becomes louder, coming nearer to us, and tall, dark ghosts pass by with silent steps. Only bells are heard. The ghosts are camels coming from Persia with carpets, cotton, and fruit. There are more than three hundred of them, and it is a long time before the road is clear again. And all the time there is a ringing as from a chime of bells.

For many thousands of years the same sound has been heard on the caravan routes. It is the same with the roar of the waters of the Euphrates and Tigris. Mighty powers have flourished and passed away on their banks, whole peoples have died out, of Babylon and Nineveh only ruins are left; but the waters of the rivers murmur just the same, and the caravan bells ring now as in the days when Alexander led the Macedonian army over the Euphrates and Tigris, when the Venetian merchant Marco Polo travelled 620 years ago between Tabriz and Trebizond by the road we are now driving along, when Timur the Lame defeated the Turks and by this road carried the Sultan Bayazid in an iron cage to exhibit him like a wild beast in the towns of Asia.

A white morning cloud seems to be floating over the grey mountains to the east, but when the sun rises it is seen to be a cone as regular as the roof of an Armenian church. It is the snow-capped top of Mount Ararat, where the ark landed when the great flood went down. The summit is always covered with snow, for the mountain is a thousand feet higher than Mont Blanc.

Now we are not far from the frontier, where Kurdish brigands render the country unsafe, but once over the border into Persian territory there is no danger. We are now in the north-western corner of Persia, in the province of Azerbeijan, which is populated mainly by Tatars. The capital of the province is Tabriz, once the chief market for the trade of all northern Persia with Europe. Here goods were collected from far and near, packed in mats of bast and bound with ropes so as to form bales, which were laden on fresh camels and carried in fourteen days to Trebizond.