308 THE BASIN OF EASTERN PERSIA AND SISTAN. 
must have been ag^ricnltural, but agriculture is to-clay impossible in the neighbor- 
hood of their village. In the first place, more than half the region round about is 
covered with sand-dunes. In the second place, irrigation is impossible, and with- 
out irrigation agriculture is utterly impossible, as the Turkomans know to their 
cost. P.al Kuwi lies in the course which the Anau stream would pursue if it should 
be prolonged. At present, however, even in the greatest floods, when no water is 
taken off upstream for irrigation, the floods are lost in the desert before coming 
half-way from Anau to Bal Kuwi. Between their point of disappearance and Bal 
Kuwi lie some miles of sand-dunes, through which it is evident that water never 
pa.sses. In brief, Bal Kuwi appears to have been an agricultural village, but under 
present conditions that would l)e impossible. If in some way the Anau stream could 
be caused to increase its volume so as to flow farther out into the de.sert, the old 
condition might be restored. Bal Kuwi seems to be a parallel case to Shah Duzd 
and Merv, and to many other ruins in this part of the world. 
THB NORTHERN BORDER OF THE DASHT-I-LUT. 
One more illustration will suffice to show the uniformity with which depopu- 
lation has gone on over the whole of Eastern Persia and its neighbors. Lord Curzon 
(p. 255) made a rapid journey along the high-road from Meshed to Teheran, which 
skirts the northern border of the great Persian de.sert. 
For the entire distance of 560 miles there is frequent and ahnndant evidence that the country 
traversed was once more densely or less sparsely populated, and for that reason more carefully 
tended, than it is at present. The traveler passes towns which have been entirely abandoned, and 
display only a melancholy confusion of tottering waJls and fallen towers. He observes citadels 
and fortified posts whidi have crumbled into irretrievable decay and are now little more than shape- 
less heaps of -mud. He sees Jong lines of choked and disused kanats, the shafts of the underground 
wells by which waiter was once brought to the lands from the mountains. The waJls of the cities are 
in ruins and exhibit yawning gaps; the few public buildings of any note are falling to pieces; rows 
of former dwellings have been abandoned to dust-heaps and dogs. 
From other more detailed accounts of this same region it appears that the niins 
are of all ages, from two thoti.sand to twenty years, and that the country has been 
subjected to a gradual proc&ss of niin and depopulation. Practically all writers on 
Persia agree that in the time of r3arius and as late as early Mohammedan times the 
countrj- was decidedly more prosperous and more populous than now ; and the area 
of cultivation and the visible supply of water in canals and kanats, or under- 
ground channels, were much greater. 
THE CADSE OF THE DEPOPULATION OF IRAN. 
Several theories have been advanced in explanation of the gradual ruin of 
Persia and its neighbors, but all of them can be summed up under two. According 
to one school, in which Curzon is the most prominent writer, the climate of Persia 
has remained practicallj- unaltered throughout historical time. The decay of the 
country is due to wars and massacres and the frightful misgoveniment which has 
prevailed centurj' after century. If a strong, just government were established the 
fonner conditions of prosperity would be restored. The progress which has been 
made under British rule in the arid portions of India and under Russian rule in 
