'Notes of a journey from Kasreen to Hamadan across the Karaghan country. By J. D. Rees' [‎9r] (22/54)

FROM KASVEEN TO HAMADAN.
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good glasses and medical advice to check incipient complaints
would be an incalculable boon.
Next morning, leaving Saidabad and a tangle of adjacent 19J miles,
villages, the bearings of which are given in the itinerary, we
passed on to Juveen, leaving a watercourse on the left and on
the right a vineyard, only to get on to others which surround
the village. Not to deface this too monotonous narrative with
statistics, Juveen is a walled village like the others already
described, and with sheep and asses and horned cattle in much
the same numbers.
From a hillock here the view across the plain northwards over
the wheat, the villages, and the orchard trees, to the lofty snow
capped Taldghdn, is very like that from the Punjab railway at
Gujerat across to the Himalayas. Far away to the right the
snowy peak of Demavend is only just visible at a distance of over
120 miles, and dwarfed as it now is to small proportions, it allows
the Elburz range as a whole to stand out in its true grandeur.
To the south the hills of Ramand, also capped with snow, shut in
the fertile plain we traverse.
The villagers of Juveen complained that they were called on
to pay more than the just dues of Government, because the Gov
ernor had offered more than the usual payment into the royal
treasury. They struck me as being in very fair circumstances,
and dotted around them were other villages which presented the
same appearance.
Hardly are the crops of Juveen passed when Mahomedabad is
reached, the only walled village, from the mud towers of which I
have had a conversation with the ladies who dwell within. They
were Turkis of course, Persian-speaking Turkis. My salaam was
returned ; my business asked. What did I make by this journey ?
Certainly I might put their pictures in my note-book if I liked.
They might have added, if I could. My village was London was
it, and where was that ? The men would probably have known
it well by name. They were all out at work in the fields. Hence
this undisturbed flirtation from the walls. The head-man, how
ever, soon appeared and said, Farangi, stay and breakfast here,
we’ve water, shade, and all good cheer. It seemed a nice village,
but I was as anxious to keep moving as he was to ask questions.
A hillock, a village—Idrabad—the tomb of a saint—how
plentiful they were of old in Islam—these passed, and the river
Kharood is reached. This stream irrigates places the under
ground channels do not reach, and helps in no small degree to
maintain throughout the fertility of the plain of Kasveen. There
might have been half a foot of water in the centre of a bed some
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