'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎516] (575/714)

516
PERSIA
Anatolian ranges. The northern part of this region is broken into
fertile valleys and rolling plateaux; the ravines sometimes contain
extensive, but not lofty, forests ; on the hill slopes are pasture-lands
which feed the flocks of the nomad tribes; whilst in the hollows of
the plains, where water is abundant, • villages are buried in the
rich foliage of orchards and gardens. A considerable river, the
Aras or Araxes, is the boundary of the province on the north, the
Kizil Uzun (Red Long Eiver), skirts it on the south, and afterwards,
under the name of the Sefid Rnd (White River), flows into the
Caspian to the east of Resht. Rich in water, with a soil excellently
adapted to the growth of cereals, possessing mineral resources,
certain though undeveloped, Azerbaijan is indeed a favoured por
tion of the Shah's dominions. Further south, when we come to
the Kurdistan mountains, a name somewhat vaguely applied to the
frontier highlands inhabited by the Kurds, the more open valleys
and undulations of the north are succeeded by narrow defiles
between the several ridges, whose uniform inclination is, with an
astonishing regularity, from north-west to south-east, and passage
between which is effected by means of deep tengs or transverse
gorges, due, like those which I have previously described in North-
Eastern Khorasan, not to the erosive action of water, but to primor
dial fracture in the crust of the earth. These mountains unite on
the south with the range known to classical writers as the Zagros.
J he great elevation and the more northern latitude of this
mountainous region are responsible for extremes of climate more
Climate severe than are felt in any other part of Persia. The
heat of the Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. in summer is matched by
the cold of Azerbaijan in winter; but whereas the Gulf is
never cold in winter, Azerbaijan is apt to be excessively hot in
summer as well. The spring and autumn are delightful seasons.
In the intervening months the sun's rays are very piercing. The
winter begins early, lasts late, and is dreaded for its rigours.
Heavy falls of snow block the roads ; men are frequently frozen to
death in the passes; at Tabriz, a thermometer exposed to the air
at night seldom rises above zero (Fahrenheit), and we read of ink
freezing in the inkstand and water in the tumblers in a room where
a fire is kept burning. Colonel Stewart, in a report, compares the
summer climate to India (with the advantage, however, of cool
nights) and the winter climate to Canada.
General Chesney gave the area of Azerbaijan as 25,280 square