364 



THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



Photograph from F. L. Bird 



THE "MORNING EXPRESS" LEAVING TEHERAN ON PERSIANS PlRST FIVE MILES 

 OF RAILWAY (SEE TEXT, PAGE 387) 



In 1916 a Russian company opened a 67-mile railroad from Julfa, on the Perso-Russian 

 frontier, to Tabriz, and the British Government is now cooperating with Persia in the con- 

 struction of railways, but for more than a quarter of a century this little narrow-gauge line 

 running from the southern end of Teheran across the hot plains to the village of Shah 

 Abdul Azim, the seat of a golden-domed shrine, was Persia's only railway. 



coats, ballet skirts for the feminine popu- 

 lation, and a dozen or more foreign 

 legations and consulates. 



During his long, peaceful reign the 

 city outgrew the old mud walls which 

 had inclosed it within a four-mile circuit. 

 They were torn down, the moat filled in 

 to provide more building sites, and a 

 larger and more extensive earthen em- 

 bankment, pierced by twelve great gates 

 and surrounded by a huge dry ditch, was 

 thrown up, giving the city its present 

 size and contour, that of an irregular 

 octagon more than twelve miles in cir- 

 cumference. 



The new area quickly filled, and now 

 the city has outgrown this. latest bound- 

 ary and residences are springing up out- 

 ride the wall, which soon will disappear, 

 like other obsolete oriental institutions, 

 to provide for necessary modern growth. 



For very obvious reasons, travel agen- 

 cies do not feature Teheran in their world 

 tours. Nevertheless it is usually quite 

 accessible, if one will tolerate a little dis- 

 comfort while getting there. At least 

 nine-tenths of all travelers to Teheran 



use the Caspian port of Baku in Trans- 

 caucasia as a jumping-orT place. 



With good luck, in peace times, one 

 can reach Baku over the uncertain route 

 via Constantinople and the Black Sea 

 to Batum, and thence by rail through 

 Tiflis, the capital of the new Republic 

 of Georgia. 



THE FIRST GLIMPSE OF PERSIA SUGGESTS 



SUMATRA 



Baku itself is the capital of Azerbaijan, 

 another of these precocious backyard 

 republics, which, by the way, is not identi- 

 cal with the neighboring Persian province 

 of the same name. Its importance as the 

 center of a great oil district has given it, 

 in spite of its polyglot population of 

 Tatars and Armenians and the fifty-seven 

 other varieties of the Caucasus, a familiar 

 and prosperous western appearance. But 

 upon embarking on the little Russian 

 steamer which navigates the Caspian be- 

 tween Baku and the leading Persian sea- 

 port of Enzali, one takes passage to an- 

 other world as surely as though crossing 

 the Styx. 



