"بلاد فارس والشأن الفارسي من إعداد السيد المحترم جورج ناثانييل كورزون، عضو البرلمان." [‎٣‎٥‎٤] (٧١٤/٤٠٥)

PERSIA
CHAPTER XII
THE NORTHERN PROVINCES
For the King of the North shall return, and shall set forth a multitude
greater than the former, and shall certainly come after certain years with a great
army and with much xiches.''- Daniel xi. 13.
In Chapter II. I have disembarked the newcomer to Persia at Resht,
or rather at Enzeli, in the south-west corner of the Caspian, and
Mazande- liave conducted him from thence to the capital; in Chapter
Ciiau nd 1 ^ ave begged his company as I ranged over the
whole of Khorasan from the Herat border in the east, to
Astrabad in the west; in the last chapter I have shown him the
plain of Teheran, bounded on the north by the stupendous barrier
of the Elburz Mountains. But on the far side of those mountains,
where their northern skirts descend in wooded flounces to the
Caspian, and between Resht and Astrabad, extends a range of
country, marked by so strange an individuality, and so unlike any
thing else that is to be seen in any other part of Persia, that a
work professing to treat of that country as a whole would err
seriously in omitting any notice of it. Readers who have fol
lowed me so far will have pictured, and have justly pictured Persia,
at least in the winter months, as for the most part a colourless, water
less, and treeless expanse, where wide deserts, with whose monotony
the eye aches, roll their sandy levels to the base of bleak mountains,
whose gaunt ribs protrude like the bones of some emaciated skele
ton through a scanty covering of soil. And yet within a few miles
at the most of this cheerless scene, severed by a single but mighty
mountain range, lies another Persia, so rich in water that malarial
vapours are bred from the stagnant swamps, so abundantly clothed
with trees of the forest, that often a pathway can scarcely be forced
through the intricate jungle, so riotous in colour that the traveller-
can almost awake with the belief that he has been transported in
sleep to some tropical clime. These extraordinary characteristics,
and this amazing change, are exhibited by the northern maritime
provinces of Mazanderan and Gilan. Mazanderan signifies Maz