House Garden 
THE HALL OF A LARGE RESIDENCE 
jest. It is, indeed, a matter of record that 
one or more persons perish in the snow every 
day during winter, about Tabriz, although 
the summer heat there and away north as far 
as the Volga mouth is at times most severe. 
A common method of heating is the open 
fireplace, which at best is a cramped and 
ungenial affair in comparison with the wide¬ 
mouthed and amiable chimneys which we have 
inherited from Teutonic and Anglo-Saxon 
forbears. Fireplaces, like love, grow by what 
they feed on, and where there is hardly any 
fuel other than dung blocks and dried camel 
thorns one need hardly look for any fireplace 
worthy of a backlog. Only in the far north 
and northeast, and the equally far south¬ 
west, between Shiraz and the Gulf, are there 
any extensive forests deserving of the name. 
In the rest of Persia, donkey drovers pack 
brush and thorns and carry them many miles 
to be sold in lieu of firewood. In charcoal a 
most prosperous trade is carried on. All this 
despite the fact that in the Kurdish mountains 
to the west, and in other places, there are large 
deposits of coal, which cannot be mined, be¬ 
cause in Persia no stockholders could be found 
who would trust any possible board of directors 
out of sight over night with any money. 
The really popular heating device of Persia 
is the tandur. It is simple. There is a hole 
in the floor, underneath which, in a cemented 
oven, a charcoal fire is built on cold days. 
Over this aperture is placed a huge frame 
structure called the kurisee. This is covered 
with blankets and forms a chamber for the 
ascending heat, into which are thrust the legs 
of a family, while the heads and shoulders 
repose on pillows round about. Rugs and 
blankets do the rest. With a well-fed tandur , 
plenteous pillows, a kalioun (hubble bubble 
pipe), frequent service of tea and a volume 
of Hafiz or Firdausi, a Persian can pass a 
comfortable winter’s day, but he is a funny 
sight to Western eyes. 
