'Lord Curzon's Notes on Persia: About 1889-1890' [‎451r] (921/1486)

GEOGRAPHICAL.
The reconnaissance survey represents an area of 15,000
square miles, the principal portion being the highlands, hitherto
unknown, except when seen from a distance as the Bakhtian Hills.
The Bakhtiaris and Lurs being mostly nomads (that is, if such a
term can apply to peoples who have permanent residences for both
summer and winter) may be met with during the winter months, in
certain villages and encampments in the lowland portions of those
provinces of Persia, neighbouring these hills to the north and
south, which centuries ago were wrested from the once mighty
Lur Chiefs. But these Bakhtiaris and Lurs,. dwellers on the banks
of the lower Karun, the Kahkaha and the Diz stream are, as far as
the province is concerned, now more like foreigners whose
individual possessions are recognized by the Persian officers.
Their own peculiar homes are among the mountain fastnesses,
which till lately have been shrouded in a kind of mystery. These
mountains have now been ascended and their valleys traversed in
all directions. Thoroughly surveyed on a scale of 8 miles to the
inch, nearly every tribe visited in their own encampments, everything
appertaining to the Bakhtiaris may now be said to be known.
The country surveyed is practically the continuation ot the
classic Zagros range running in the normal direction of all South-
West Persian mountains north-west and south-east; and as the
country of the summer homes of the Bakhtiaris (who . invariably
speak of it as their real and permanent home), it is taken to
commence at the Khana Mirza (the home of Mirza, a chief of
Janikis) to Khuramabad and Burujird 300 miles, the same dis
tance as from London to Berwick. #
The country is remarkable in so far as it differs materially
from ordinary Persian geographical characteristics, and is hydro-
graphically of peculiar interest.
The mountain ranges, as a system, run parallel to each other
as a rule. The “ high-lands, ” however,
Mountain Ranges. ^ be gald to be limlted to t he slopes
and valleys forming part of the two main and highest ranges.
As such they are nameless. Like in all savage countries, moun
tains, rivers ana valleys are known only by local names, covering
frequently but a few miles, and here, especially where tribes live
and have lived for centuries without daring to venture from one
valley to another, it is not seldom found that the same high