'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎178] (213/714)

178
PERSIA
eastern province of Persia. Extending from about long. 56 degs.
on the west, to long. G1 degs. on the east, or from the Kal Mura
Province of I^ ver 1 to the Heri 11 ud, it presents an average width of
Khorasan a little over 300 miles. Its extreme length would be,
from its north-western to its south-eastern extremity, a distance of
GOO miles ; but its average length may be calculated at 100 miles
less. Upon the north it is bounded by the great mountain range,
the eastern continuation of the Elburz system, which I have already
described at length, and by which it is severed from what was once
Turkoman, but is now Russian Transcaspian territory. On the
south it is bounded and all but cut off from the world by the
appalling desert that stretches like a sea to the very outskirts of
Kerman.
In this wide extent of territory, which is estimated at between
150,000 and 200,000 square miles, are included the most extreme
Natural varieties of physical conformation, of scenery, and of
features climate. Upon the north appear mountains whose
highest peaks are rarely left by the snow, and rise to an elevation
of between 12,000 and 13,000 feet. Range succeeds range in this
knotted mountain cluster; the intervening valleys, with a mean
elevation of 3,000 to 4,000 feet, being the recipients of whatever
moisture drains from their sides, the centres of cultivation, and the
sites of villages and towns. In contrast to this almost Alpine
scenery, the Dasht-i-Kavir, or Great Salt Desert of Persia, one of
the most strange and funereal scenes upon which ever fell the eye
of man, lays its palsied hand across the middle part. Then towards
the south-east ensues a second mountainous plateau, with peaks of
(3,000 feet, and lower cultivated valleys. Finally, to redress the
balance, comes the Dasht-i-Lut, or Desert of Lut, whose features,
though different, are not unfit to be compared with those of the
Dasht-i-Kavir. 2
Cultivation here, as elsewhere in Persia, depends upon water
supply; the detritus swept down by the streams or torrents
depositing a layer of soil upon the sand, which is subsequently
1 Kising on the south slopes of the Ala Dagh range, the Kal Mura receives the
drainage of the Jagatai or Juwain plain, through which it flows in an easterly
direction, is then joined by the Kara Su (Black Water), after which it turns south,
cuts the main route from Meshed to Teheran at the Pul-i-Abrishum (Bridge of
Silk), and after a further course of fifty miles is lost in the Salt Desert.
2 Descriptions of both these deserts will more properly be given in a chapter
upon the Eastern Provinces. Vide vol. ii. cap. sxiii.