'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎388] (441/714)

PERSIA
The surface where not cultivated consists of natural or artificial swamps
overgrown with forest trees and thorns, particularly bramble bushes
of incredible luxuriance, and perfectly impervious. Indeed, these
brambles are called by the inhabitants the ' Pehlewanha Mazunderanee '
i.e. the heroes or guardians (lit. wrestlers) of Mazunderan, and well
do they deserve the appellation. 1
Monteith, who was a practical soldier, said, 'If only the
Persians were united, nothing ought to be more desired by them
than attack from the Caspian.' Indeed, in the present state of
communications, it should be as easy for a comparatively small
body of well led troops, with proper dispositions, to repel any in
cursion from the ( aspian, as it would be to repel a storming party
from the Great Pyramid, Disembarkation, to begin with, is
difficult, cumbrous, and lengthy. An invader should find his
work cut out for him ere ever he set foot on land. But, even
supposing him to have landed, the swamps and jungles of the
lower levels should whistle with bullets and pullulate with ambus
cades ; 2 whilst, if the lowlands were either surrendered or seized,
there would remain the ambush of the forest, the covert of the
deep ravines, the invulnerable vantage points of rocky pass and
precipitous ledge. For an army whose advance was seriously and
systematically contested, to cross the Elburz would be no mean
achievement of warfare. Finally, supposing resistance to have
been either abandoned or overcome, and the country to have been
occupied by the enemy, his continued stay there should be made
a daily and nightly persecution by a peasantry, or still more a
native militia, familiar with the country and inured to guerilla
warfare. All these perils are based upon the hypothesis of an un
welcome intruder, and a population or an army pledged to defend
its homes. If neither of these conditions be realised in North Persia,
and it may be rash to assume their possibility, there will remain
no reason why Eussia should not occupy Gilan and Mazanderan
1 A Winter's Journey, vol. ii. p, 468,
2 This was what actually happened in 1804 in the early stages of the first
Russo-Persian war, when Zizianoff, the Russian Commander-in-Chief, planned a
descent upon Gilan, with a view of threatening the capital. He landed his troops
at Enzeli, but, not finding boats enough to convey them across the lagoon to
Resht, was compelled to march round the shore through the swamps and jungle.
From these secure recesses the natives harassed the Russian column with
musketry fire, and threw it into such confusion that the order was given to
retreat, and the attempt was ignominiously abandoned.