"دليل بلاد فارس. مجلد II" [و‎‎٢‎٢‎٠] (٧٠٦/٤٤٤)

MiZANDARAN
427
advanced to Samnan. The northern column, which went via Barfarush
was defeated near Firuzkuh on August 21st. On September 5th (1911)
a government force of 1,000 men, under Yprim, (Ephraim), the Armenian,
and Sardar Bahadur, Bakhtiari, defeated the royalists west of Aradan
captured (he Mazandaran force and shot Sardar Arshad. This disposed of
the ez-Shahs.
Geography .—A province of Persia lying between the southern coast of
the Caspian and the Elburz range ; bounded on the north by the Caspian,
on the east by the province of Astrabad, on the south by the Elburz
range, and on the west by the province of Gilan.
It has a length of about 220 miles and an average width of about 60
miles.
Mazandaran may be divided into two distinct descriptions of country ;
the low, marshy, and impenetrable jungle-clad plains, varying in breadth
from 10 to 30 miles along the south coast of the Caspian, and the elevated
and forest-clad spur from the northern face of Elburz; both these in
their peculiar way partake, in the highest degree, of the impracticability
usual to such countries.
The following general de'scription of the province, which was given by
Fraser, holds good to the present day: —
4 £ 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 ‘ Pahlwan-i-Mazandaran, that
is, the heroes, or guardians, of Mazandaran, and well do they deserve
the appellation. ■< -- <-
Above this flat space tower the mountains, assuming the appearance
of two ranges, the first of which is clothed with forests as dense as those
below, and which throw forward spurs and shoulders that sometimes
reach the coast. Beyond this wooded and buttressed wall, the peaks and
masses of the second are seen, snow-spotted even in September. It is
in ascending these that one meets with the most difficult passes. Among
their recesses, and even on their summits as well as on those of the
wooded hills below, are found the ‘ yailaqs ’, or summer quarters to which
the inhabitants resort in the heat of that season. The whole of these
wooded mountains are pervaded by paths and passes so intricate that
none but an experienced guide can find his way from one place to
another ; but the long winding tracks that lead through fhe foothills
and the low plain are equally perplexing and more difficult, following,
as they do generally, the windings of streams and rivers that keep to
no particular bed, and involving the traveller in swamps, creeks, and
quicksands against which, as they shift with every flood, no experience
can guard. These dense jungles and swamps are the birthplaces of all
the ill-health and disease, the hosts of flies, insects and reptiles, and the
other abominations that infest Mazandaran. 1
The beach, which bounds this flat is a strip of sand and gravel, thrown up
by the wash of the surf, which is driven against the southern shore with
great violence by the prevailing wind from the north. In fact, the whole
coast is lined by a chain of sand-hills, rising sometimes from 25 to 30 feet
in height, and 20 yards in breadth, behind which lies a morass of stagnant