'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎275] (316/714)

i®r
FROM 3IESIIED TO TEHERAN
ofPert" 7 " the PreVaiIing laW 511 the econom y "f ^0 serai
Perhaps the weirdest and most impressive of the many unwonted
memones that the traveller earries away with him from snoh-like
Camel, h, travel in the Bast (Per.) A Persian custom allowing an individual to seek asylum at a designated location. is the recollection of the camel
hilt d I araVanS , f , he i" 18 enCOU " tere ' 1 a t night. Out of the
black darkness is heard the distant boom of a heavy bell. Mourn
fully and with perfect regularity of iteration, it sounds, gradually
swelling nearer and louder, and perhaps mingling with the tones
of sma er bells, signalling the rearguard of the same caravan. The
big bell is the insignia and alarum of the leading camel alone.
But nearer and louder as the sound becomes, not another sound
and not a visible object, appear to accompany it. Suddenly, and
without the slightest warning, there looms out of the darkness like
the apparition of a phantom ship, the form of the captain of the
caravan. His spongy tread sounds softly on the smooth sand, and
ike a great string of linked ghouls, the silent procession stalks by
and is swallowed up in the niglit.
And how wonderful and ever-present is the contrast in Eastern
travel to all life and movement at home! No heavy carts and
The umbering wagons jolt to and fro between the farmyard
SntLf T the i fields - No ™ hi ^ and swift equipages
dash past upon macadamised roads. Alas ! there are no
roads ; and, if no roads, how much less any vehicles or wagons '
Thatched roofs and tiled cottages, lanes and hedgerows and trim
fields, rivers coursing between full banks, beyond all the roar and
sudden, smoky rush of the train—these might not exist in the
world at all, and do not exist in the world of the Persian
straitened and stunted, but inexpressibly tranquil in his existence'
Here, all is movement and bustle, flux and speed ; there, every
thing is imperturbable, immemorial, immutable, slow.
Between Mazinan and Shahrud, a distance of approximately one
hundred miles, intervene four stages, which were formerly known
Turkoman as the ' Stages of Terror.' Here the western extremities
orays of t | ie Khorasan mountains, pushed out in long spurs of
diminishing height from the knotted mountain cluster that sur
rounds the head-waters of the Atrek, descend on to the plain
and the road pursues a winding course through their lower folds
and undulations. This entire mountain region was once desolated
by Turkoman bandits, and through these valleys and ravines they
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