Persia: The Awakening East 



365 



The post carriages and four-wheeled 

 freight wagons brought from Europe 

 are still comparatively rare, and the 

 greater part of the merchandise is car- 

 ried by means of caravans and droves of 

 pack animals. During our first day's 

 journey we passed thousands of camels 

 traveling in long files stretching some- 

 times for a quarter of a mile without a 

 break, each fastened by a long cord at- 

 tached to a ring fixed in its supercilious 

 nose to the saddle of the one ahead. The 

 Bactrian camels used on these cold 

 mountain trails of northern Persia are 

 very different in appearance from the 

 gaunt, apocalyptic beasts seen in the des- 

 erts of Egypt. Indeed, the true Bactrian 

 is a very handsome animal (judged at 

 least by the standards of camel beauty), 

 his neck and shoulders covered with a 

 long growth of soft brown hair, which 

 hides the rude outlines of his powerful 

 frame. A good Persian camel is capa- 

 ble of carrying with ease a load of a 

 thousand pounds, and as they are often 

 the whole fortune of their owners, they 

 are treated with the best of care and 

 attention. 



THROUGH A DESERT LAND 



Now and again the white gleam of a 

 salt marsh, seen on the horizon, or the 

 pearly mist of a distant mirage would 

 persuade us that we were approaching 

 the life-giving presence of water — an 

 illusion which receded or disappeared on 

 our nearer approach. 



The traveler, read in the poetry and 

 literature of the Golden East, soon 

 learns to appreciate the Oriental's point 

 of view in judging the beauties of na- 

 ture. Compared to the verdant scenery 

 of Europe, there is little to admire in 

 the landscape of northern Persia ; yet 

 these lonely wastes are not without a 

 certain wild beauty of their own. The 

 great drama of morning and evening 

 tints the desert with wonderful hues that 

 shift and blend like the changing colors 

 of the sea, and in the fierce light of noon- 

 day strange cloud shadows play across 

 its surface, relieving the monotonous 

 uniformity of rock and sand. 



Contrast, indeed, is the keynote of 

 desert life. No gardens have ever 

 seemed to me half so beautiful as some 

 walled inclosure, filled with scanty rows 

 of orange and lemon trees, found at the 

 end of a long day's ride across the arid 

 Persian plain. No fruit has ever had so 

 rare a taste as the little yellow citrons 

 brought us by Persian peasants, in some 

 dusty caravansary, as we lay resting our 

 weary limbs among our saddle-bags on 

 the hard mud floor. 



To the poets of Persia we owe the 

 common impression that their beloved 

 country is a land of gardens and flowers. 

 Their Oriental imagination has woven a 

 veil of romance about the "Fields of 

 Iran,"- while throughout the greater part 

 of the Shah's dominions the very reverse 

 of this legend of fertility is nearer the 

 truth. The life of the Persian peasant 

 is one long struggle with the adverse 

 forces of nature. Such rare cultivation 

 as we saw depended entirely on artificial 

 irrigation by means of underground 

 channels leading to distant reservoirs 

 among the mountains that generations 

 of toilers have hollowed out with in- 

 finite pains, often hundreds of feet below 

 the level of the land. The few villages 

 that we passed were miserable collec- 

 tions of mud huts whose inhabitants 

 earned a precarious existence by trading 

 with the travelers along the caravan 

 road. 



A CITY OF CONTRASTS 



The sentimental traveler visiting Te- 

 heran for the first time, who expects 

 to find in the Shah's capital some fabu- 

 lous city of the "Arabian Nights," is 

 destined to be disappointed. Persia has 

 long since awakened from her golden 

 dream of the past. Like Japan, the 

 Land of the Lion and the Sun has fallen 

 under the spell of Western ideas, and 

 the Persian of today is striving to adapt 

 his ancient civilization to the ways and 

 customs of Europe with the same en- 

 ergy and lack of discrimination that 

 characterize the victorious sons of 

 Nippon. 



In Persian eves, at least, Teheran is a 



