'GAZETTEER OF PERSIA. VOLUME I' [‎160v] (327/820)

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gQO KAL—KAL
KALlT (No. 3)— Lat. 34° 12' 13"; Long. 58° 29' 30".—{Lentz.)
A village in Khorasan, 9 miles from Kakh on the road to Meshed. It
contains some 130 houses and is charmingly situated on a high hill, it
lies in a semi-circle of gardens, watered by numerous streams from the
heights above. Numerous fruit trees, such as walnut, mulberry, peach,
apricot, pomegranate, vine, grow here in rich luxuriance. Opium for the
market at Yazd is extensively cultivated in the neighbouring valley, as
well as cotton. The inhabitants are Persians ; and there are a few houses
of a tribe called Zanyin. An old fort commands the village ; but being
in ruins, itself commanded at close range, and its water-supply being
easily stopped, it has no strength whatever.— {Bellew ; Goldsmid ; Mac
Gregor.)
KALAT CHAl (River)—
A river in north-eastern Khorasan, which rises a little to the south-wes*
. of Kalat in the slopes of the Kuh-i-Tmarat.
It at first flows along the foot of the southern wall of this range in a
north-westerly direction, and then turns almost due'east and pierces it by a
remarkable natural gap known as the Darband, or defile, of Arghavan Shah.
The narrowest part of this gap, which has a width of about 40 paces, is
closed by gates so constructed as to give free passage to the stream when
swollen by floods. The whole length of the passage or gap is about 400
yards, which gives the width of base of the enclosing wall at that point
The crest, 500 feet above the stream, is so narrow, that a single man with
difficulty finds foothold on it.
Clearing this remarkable defile the stream widens out over a pebbly bed,
and, passing under a small fort defended by two guns, and round the little
village of Arghavan Shah of 30 houses, enters a green and fertile valley, into
which the plateaux on either side descend easily, leaving between their
slopes a strip of level ground, through which the stream meanders gently,
shaded by thickets of fruit and forest trees. The moist ground lying between
the loops and bends of the stream bears fine crops of rice, and the hill slopel
are terraced and covered with orchards and vineyards, small in extent, but
very productive. Passing the village of Guk Gumbad, the valley widens
slightly till it reaches the centre of the plateau, where the stream enters
a deep, rocky gorge, and flows nearly north between precipitous banks to the
northern wall of enclosing heights, through which it passes by a gap similar
to that of Arghavan Shah, known as the Darband-i-Nafta. Thence it winds
through a maze of low hills to the Trans-Caspian depression, where its
waters irrigate the rice-fields of Chehar Deh, crossing the Russo-Persian
frontier at HajI Chashmeh. The stream, where it flows through the Kalat, is
clear and bright; but its water is said by the natives to be impregnated from
its source with naphtha. From this or some other cause,—possibly from the
malaria that it generates in its passage through a low, narrow, pent-up valley
with a good deal of irrigated land,—it certainly has a most marked dele'terious
effect on the health of all, save the natives, living within its influence.
The total length of the river is 30 miles. East of the village of Istiksu it
r?ceives as a tributary on the right bank the small stream of Mirza Giasht,
>viiich flows through a narrow defile : on the left bank near the same village