'Lord Curzon's Notes on Persia: About 1889-1890' [‎668r] (1356/1486)

GEOGRAPHY OF SOUTH-WEST PERSIA.
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have elsewhere supplied. To science and to commerce the main interest
of this same ridge consists in the fact that just below the village of
Ahwaz—a small cluster of mud-hovels with about 700 inhabitants,
situated on the left bank—the sandstone obtrudes itself in the shape of
a number of rocky ledges right across the river-bed. Of these reefs five
are distinctly perceptible in low water; and it is the water eddying
above their summits, or tearing between the gaps by which they are
separated, that constitutes the famous rapids of Ahwaz, and creates that
practical barrier to continuous navigation which has always impeded,
and continues to impede, the mercantile development of the Karun route.
Major Wells’ survey and map of these rapids was published in the
‘ Proceedings ’ of this Society for March 1883, and I shall therefore refrain
from any further description. That his chart does not quite accurately
represent the river-bed and islands as I saw them, may be due to the
fact that both are constantly changing, and that the islands, composed
of silt and sand, have acquired quite different proportions in the passage
of nine years. The sight and sound of the river at Ahwaz arc both
remarkable. For on the one hand the channel is swollen to nearly three
times its ordinary width, and on the largest reef are visible the massive
remains of the great bund or dam that was built across the river, pro
bably in the Sassanian epoch, to hold up the waters for irrigation
purposes. Ou the other hand, the noise of the waters hurtling over the
ledges and through the gates, can be heard for some distance, and in
the stillness of the night is always humming in the ear.
Steamboats have more than once (the Assyria in 1842, the Susa in
1889, and the Shushan in the present spring) been taken, partly by
steam power, partly by tow-lines, up the main rapid ; but this is an