PERSIAN CARAVAN SKETCHES 



457 



■ . ... "_. 



Photograph by Harold F. Weston 



BEING RECEIVED AT THE PORTAL OF A PERSIAN VIEEAGE MANSION 



The serfs or poor peasants of Persia generally live in hovels of stone and mud, in 

 villages inclosed by high walls. Windows are crude holes. Doors are blankets hung across 

 the openings. The smoke wanders out gradually. These people are extraordinarily ignorant 

 and primitive, but are good-natured and hospitable. 



our annoyance had been atoned for, our 

 honor saved. 



Three days later, after an exception- 

 ally weary night of caravan, our eyes, 

 accustomed to the unbroken sequence of 

 rolling plateau, were abruptly presented 

 with a view of Yezdikhast. It is only by 

 realizing this contrast that the picture of 

 Yezdikhast can give one something of the 

 thrill that we felt on coming upon it 

 across the waterless, treeless, almost 

 trackless, uplands of Persia (see Color 

 Plate X). 



Yezdikhast, which means in old Per- 

 sian ''God wills it," is the most strikingly 

 situated town in all Persia. It has been 



compared to a petrified ship left stranded 

 on one side of a deep river valley. 



Approaching it from the plain, one sees 

 only the tops of a few houses and the 

 cracked dome of a single mosque ; but on 

 reaching the edge of the ravine, a quarter 

 of a mile broad and fully 200 feet deep, 

 formerly a river-bed and now covered 

 with rich grain fields, one is unexpectedly 

 confronted with the most remarkable pic- 

 ture of a city of the dead — a sheer rock 

 cliff topped by half-ruined mud-and- 

 stone-built houses piled four stories high 

 on its narrow crest, projecting beams of 

 broken wooden balconies that thrust their 

 arms against the sky like decaying gib- 



