House £sf Garden 
the Greek and Florentine forms, and some¬ 
thing of the Russian new-birth, which is in 
itself half Asiatic, have a charm most satis¬ 
fying to Western eyes ; they are picturesque. 
Close at hand, much of the glamour goes, 
and it is all crude and uninspiring enough ; 
but there is still a magic in the Persian 
atmosphere that turns its masonry to gold 
when the sun shines, and makes over its 
interminable stucco into cameos. 
The spirit of the people at large, though, 
is moribund. There remains only the lees 
of the old civilization. But so long as he 
place that is wooded or even green. Plains 
which in bygone time have been famously 
productive show caked and hardened soil, 
tilled in the archaic way, sometimes with 
comparatively generous harvest, but far 
oftener with little or no return. 
"Phis state of things seems to be the result 
of unchecked denudation and consequent 
destruction of the water supply, the lack of 
which is sadly apparent everywhere. Over 
a long and sorry stretch of country I rode 
with the man who is now in charge of the 
Shah’s experimental farm at Teheran. While 
APPROACH TO A TYPICAL PERSIAN VILLAGE 
shall draw national breath the Persian will 
continue to preen himself in a fool’s paradise. 
H e is the true Ouixote of the new century. 
Persia, in his walk and conversation at least, 
is still the greatest and most beautiful land 
under the sun. 
The general impoverishment is nowhere 
more painfully manifest than in the agricul¬ 
tural conditions. Districts which early 
European voyagers found well wooded or 
abundantly fertile present to-day only a 
dreary monotony of bare, relentless, yellowish 
gray hills, fruitless fields, and highways along 
which one seldom happens upon a halting 
of Oriental birth, he had been trained in 
agriculture and horticulture in the bestschools 
of Europe, and was a master of the science 
of cultivation in all its branches. “ The soil is 
sick,” he said; “it is dying of starvation and 
thirst. Given proper treatment and three- 
fourths of this country ought to be a perfect 
garden.” 
Proof of his declaration is not hard to 
find. Long distances apart, in the arid tracts 
of the northern plateau, there are water 
courses, where noisy streams tumble down 
from the distant wooded hills, always carefully 
prisoned, in their lower reaches, to turn 
177 
