June 4, 1890.] 



Garden and Forest. 



271 



by laborious irrigation, causes vegetation to prosper around 

 the cities or in artificial oases. Naturally, there are no forests 

 on this plateau, and the large province of Khorassan, some 

 60,000 square miles in extent, is chiefly a salt-sand desert, 

 having water only at long intervals. This district is supposed 

 to have been the bed of a sea like the Caspian, which gradu- 

 ally evaporated, as the Caspian is now doing. 



On this plateau Poplars, Mulberries, Walnut-trees and almost 

 every variety of fruit-trees can be made to flourish by irriga- 

 tion ; but evergreens, like the Pine, do not seem to take kindly 

 to the soil or the climate. The Peach is indigenous to this 

 region ; the Fig grows well, although inferior to that of Asia 

 Minor. The Quince of Ispahan is famous ; its flavor and fra- 

 grance are unsurpassed. The Pomegranate is also a favorite 

 tree of the Persian plateau. But all these trees are there 

 dependent on irrigation. Stop that, and the spirit of the desert, 

 in a very short time, resumes its sway. 



But the most remarkable vegetable phenomenon of the 

 Persian plateau is the Chevar or Plane-tree, called with us the 

 Buttonwood-tree or Sycamore. Every Persian garden has 

 some of these trees. They are planted in rows near together 

 and trimmed high up so as to produce a lofty shaft. A double 

 purpose is served by this process — shaded avenues are ob- 

 tained and timbers for roofing the dwellings of adobe. The 

 scarcity of timber in Persia renders this a most important 

 object. Plane-trees and Poplars are one of the most valuable 

 sources of revenue to a Persian proprietor. The avenue of 

 these trees extending from Teheran to the villages of the 

 Shimran, where the wealthy resort in the warm season, a dis- 

 tance of some eight miles, form an appanage of the chief wife 

 of the Shah, who makes quite a revenue from the annual pro- 

 duct of this timber. But the Plane-tree in this form is the re- 

 sult of cultivation. It is in its natural state, as it grows without 

 the intervention of man, that it chiefly concerns us here. 

 The Sycamore is reputed by tradition to have been the tree 

 cursed by the Saviour for its barrenness. In the remotest times 

 legends clustered about it, especially among the Persians. Alex- 

 ander the Great, on his march to Hyrcania, is said to have come 

 across a pair of Plane-trees in the north of Persia — one male, the 

 other female — which, in a mysterious conversation, foretold his 

 destiny and his doom. Marco Polo has much to say of this tree 

 in speaking of Persia; and it is very remarkable that he gen- 

 erally writes of that country as the Arbre See and the Arbre 

 Sol, thereby indicating what a prominent feature of the Per- 

 sian landscape and vegetation the Plane-tree was in those days, 

 in so much that it gave a name to the country. 



The Platanus is indeed a most eccentric and extraordinary 

 tree, as one sees it in Persia. It enjoys water courses and 

 shady valleys, and it grows in the desert far from water with 

 equal satisfaction apparently and with equal grandeur. It is by 

 far the noblest tree of central and western Asia in its form and 

 dimensions. The Plane-tree under which Godfrey of Bouillon 

 encamped by the Bosphorus is still standing, a most venera- 

 ble and gigantic patriarch. Not many years ago a similar tree 

 was standing in Asia Minor which was reputed to be the tree 

 which Xerxes decorated on his way to Greece. 



The market-place in the Persian villages, where the streams 

 rush down from the mountains, are always shaded by one or 

 more vast Chevars, under which the peasant rests at noon- 

 day, the cobbler plies his awl, the itinerant musician or physi- 

 cian soothes the rustic mind or body, and the children and 

 the dogs romp and sleep in idle groups. The mosque court- 

 yards in the cities are ever canopied by the spreading boughs 

 of the Plane-tree, and one almost feels that this is indeed a 

 tree which seeks and thrives especially in the society of man, 

 and that abundant water is one of the essentials of its 

 development. 



But go forth from the habitations of man, and far from the 

 springs of water, where the soil is yellow sand or pumice- 

 stone, ejected ages ago from the vast crater of Demavend, 

 where there is no herbage, or, at most, only the cynical This- 

 tle; where even birds are few, and these chiefly the eagle and 

 the vulture soaring far up in the blue dome that rains heat 

 over the wastes that quiver with mirage, and which is swept 

 over by whirling columns of dust, and you find the Chevar 

 flourishing there. 



I remember a most noble old Plane-tree at Gelandevgk, 

 standing by a tank where the Shah's pavilion is pitched when 

 he hunts in that district. Fruit-trees and Melon-fields and 

 rivulets, and a village hidden in foliage, were all about us, and 

 the old tree, still green in its old age, was evidently in conge- 

 nial company. But from the door of my tent I could look on 

 the yellow and arid side of a great hill, on which the sun piti- 

 lessly rained heat. Near the top of the slope stood a large 

 and solitary Plane-tree, the only green thing on the hill. Its 



leaves were as abundant and fresh as those of its rival, whose 

 roots rested among the " rivers of waters." 



Turning from the central plateau to the south we find the 

 chief feature in the arboreal vegetation of Persia to be the 

 Date Palm, which grows in the neighborhood of the Persian 

 Gulf in such abundance that dates form one of the most im- 

 portant articles of export from the country. On the other 

 hand, in the south-west, in the region bordering on Turkey, 

 extensive forests of dwarf Oak are found, the only examples 

 of the Oak in Persia. 



If we turn north again from the central waste lands of 

 Persia we find ourselves confronted by the tremendous 

 ranges of the Elborz, practically a continuation of the 

 Hindoo Kush, extending from Turkistan to Armenia. In 

 Persia it has an average elevation of 9,000 feet, rising to 

 13,000 feet between Teheran and the Caspian, while the 

 peak of Demavend, forty miles from the capital, is no less 

 than 21,000 feet high, the loftiest mountain between the Hima- 

 layas and the Andes. South of the Elborz range stretches the 

 great arid table-land. But when one reaches the top of the 

 ridge he enters with great suddenness, and without warning, 

 upon an altogether different scene. The north side of the 

 mountains faces the Caspian Sea, and condenses the moisture 

 deposited by the clouds driven by the breezes of an inland sea 

 800 miles long. Here one finds "a land of streams." Every- 

 where cascades leap down the mountain sides. The roads are 

 often by the side of deep and turbid rivers or carried over 

 them by stone bridges of the most massive character. A 

 piercing wind rushes through the gorges, so violent at some 

 points as to blow men, and even mules, into the rivers. What 

 is yet more remarkable, almost immediately after beginning 

 the northern descent, the traveler enters the gloom of the 

 densest forests in the world. The sun umbrella is laid aside, 

 and whereas the roads were thick with fine white dust, they are 

 now often muddy and traversed by chattering brooks. 



The forests, league after league, are Walnut, and here and 

 there Chestnut. The vastness and density of these Walnut 

 forests is extraordinary. They reach almost from the ridge to 

 the sea, a distance of seventy or eighty miles, and east and 

 west over 200 miles, along the rich alluvial strip which borders 

 the Caspian. 



In the heart of these forests the mouldering ruins of old 

 castles and towns are still to be seen of which the very name 

 is forgotten, and the tiger, the panther, the wild boar and the 

 wolf roam through the underwood unmolested. Curious 

 wandering tribes also dwell there, doubtless descendants of 

 the legendary White Dios encountered and conquered by 

 Rustem in the glimmering dawn of history. 



The glades in these forests are of magical beauty ; one may 

 easily imagine himself to be in the realms of the Fairy Queen 

 when at noonday he comes to one of these delicious openings 

 and lunches on a rich green sward, where the air is musical 

 with streams and an abattis of huge massy fallen trunks 

 seems to protect one from the dark ranks of the surrounding 

 forests. One of the most singular features of these forests is 

 the frequent appearance of the Pomegranate growing wild. 

 Its bright green, glossy leaf contrasts vividly with the darker 

 foliage around it, while the exquisite orange-scarlet of the 

 blossoms shines in the emerald gloom like sparks of flame. 

 At intervals, grandly picturesque forests of Olive are seen, 

 chiefly on the river banks; the Elm and the Box also grow 

 there in considerable abundance, and the Poplar is common. 

 But the chief feature of the great forests of northern Persia is, 

 after all, the Walnut. Deciduous trees alone compose that wil- 

 derness of woods. On the plain near the Caspian, however, 

 Cypresses are sometimes seen, chiefly near the towns, evi- 

 dently the result of cultivation. It is worth remarking that 

 the northern side of the Elborz reeks with malaria, and dan- 

 gerous fever lurks in the jungle along the Caspian, while the 

 arid central plateau of Persia is one of the healthiest regions 

 on the globe. „ „ „, n 



New York. ■->■ (*• W. Benjamin. 



The Water Supply of Southern California. 



CALIFORNIANS are now discussing the forests, swamp- 

 lands and possible reservoirs of the southern Sierras. A 

 very interesting interview was recently held with Mr. S. C. 

 Lillis, of Kern County, the manager of the famous Lagunade 

 Tache ranch. He holds that the proper irrigation system forthe 

 San Joaquin Valley is based upon two things — the preservation 

 of the forests and the utilization of the natural reservoir sites. 

 He says that many sheep men have been permitted to obtain 

 rights to the natural pastures of the high Sierras under an in- 

 correct interpretation of the Swamp-land Act. These tracts 

 are situated above the five-thousand-foot level, and are unfit 



