From Pole to Pole: A Book for Young People — Sec 4 The Persian Desert (1906)

ACROSS THE KEVIR

We must now resume the journey to India.

You will remember (see p. 33) that after arriving at Teheran from Trebizond I made up a caravan consisting of six Persians, one Tatar, and fourteen camels.

On January 1 everything is ready.

The camels are all laden; thick rugs cover their backs to prevent them being rubbed sore by the loads, and the humps stick up through two round holes in the cloths in order that they may not be crushed and injured.

The largest camels go first.

Each has its head adorned with a red embroidered headstall, studded with shining plates of metal and red and yellow pompons, and a plume waves above its forehead.

Round the chest is a row of brass sleigh-bells, and one large bell hangs round the neck.

Two of these bells are like small church bells; they are so big that the camels would knock their knees against them if they were hung in the usual way, so they are fastened instead to the outer sides of a couple of boxes on the top of the loads.

The camels are proud of being decked so finely; they are conscious of their own importance, and stalk with majestic, measured strides through the southern gate of Teheran.

My riding camel is the largest in the caravan (Plate V. ).

He has thick brown wool, unusually long and plentiful on his neck and chest.

His loads form a small platform between the humps and along his flanks, with a hollow in the middle, where I sit as in an armchair, with a leg on each side of the front hump.

From there I can spy out the land, and with the help of a compass put down on my map everything I see--hills, sandy zones, and large ravines.

Camels put out the two left legs at the same time, and then the two right legs.

Their gait is therefore rolling, and the rider sits as in a small boat pitching and tossing in a broken sea.

Some people become sea-sick from sitting all day bobbing between the humps, but one soon becomes accustomed to the motion.

When the animal is standing up it is, of course, impossible to mount on his back without a ladder, so he has to lie down to let me get on him.

But sometimes it happens that he is in too great a hurry to rise before I am settled in my place, and then I am flung back on to my head, for he lifts himself as quickly as a steel spring, first with the hind legs and then with the fore.

But when I am up I am quite at home.

Sometimes, on the march, the camel turns his long neck and lays his shaggy head on my knee.

I pat his nose and stroke him over the eyes.

It is impossible to be other than good friends with an animal which carries you ten hours a day for several months.

In the morning he comes up to my tent, pushes his nose under the door-flap, and thrusts his shaggy head into the tent, which is not large, and is almost filled up when he comes on a visit.

After he has been given a piece of bread he backs out again and goes away to graze.

[Illustration: PLATE V. THE AUTHOR'S RIDING CAMEL, WITH GULAM HUSSEIN.

] The ring of bells is continually in my ears.

The large bells beat in time with the steps of the camels.

Their strides are long and slow, and a caravan seldom travels more than twenty miles in a day.

Our road runs south-eastwards.

We have soon left behind us the districts at the foot of the Elburz Mountains, where irrigation canals from rivers are able to produce beautiful gardens and fruitful fields.

The farther we proceed the smaller and more scattered are the villages.

Only along their canals is the soil clothed with verdure, and we have scarcely left a village before we are out on the greyish-yellow desert, where withered steppe shrubs stand at wide intervals apart.

Less and less frequently do we meet trains of asses bound for Teheran with great bundles of shrubs and bushes from the steppe to be used as fuel.

The animals are small and miserable, and are nearly hidden by their loads.

Their nostrils are cruelly pierced, so that they may be made to go quicker and keep up longer.

They look sleepy and dejected, these small, obstinate donkeys which never move out of the way.

Their long ears flap backwards and forwards, and their under-lips hang down like bags.

At the very last village on the edge of the desert we stay two days to prepare ourselves for the dangers ahead of us.

The headman of the village owns ten camels, which he will gladly hire us for a few days;

they are to carry trusses of straw and water in leathern bags.

Our own camels are already fully laden, and the hired camels are only to give us a start.

When they turn back we shall have to shift for ourselves.

After we have left this village not a sign of life is visible.

Before us to the south-east small isolated hills stand up like islands in the sea, and beyond them the horizon of the desert lies as level as that of the ocean.

Through this great sandy waste the caravans travel from oasis to oasis, but in the north there is a tract, called the Kevir, within which not the smallest oasis can be found.

Not a clump of grass, not even a blade, is to be seen, for the desert is saturated with salt, and when it rains in winter the briny clay becomes as slippery as ice.

And this is precisely the place we are making for.

We travelled a whole month before we came to the point where we intended to make the attempt to cross the Kevir.

Hitherto everything had continued in a steady course, and one day had been like another.

It was winter and we had fully 25 degrees of frost in the night: one day it snowed so thickly that the foremost camels in the train were seen only as faint shadows.

For several days mist lay so dense over the desert that we had to trust chiefly to the compass.

Sometimes we travelled for four or five days without finding a drop of water, but we had all we needed in our leathern bags.

At the edge of the sandy desert, where high dunes are piled up by the wind, tamarisks and saxauls were often growing.

Both are steppe bushes which grow to a height of several feet; their stems are hard and provided us with excellent fuel.

My servants gathered large faggots, and the camp fires flamed up brightly and grandly, throwing a yellow light over the silent waste.

From a village called Jandak I set out with only two men and four camels, but we had to wait for four days on the edge of the salt desert because of rain.

When rain falls in the Kevir the whole desert soon becomes a sea of slippery mud, and camels cannot walk without slipping and falling.

Whole caravans have perished in this cruel desert by being overtaken by rain, and in many other cases the men only have managed to escape with the loss of their camels and their merchandise.

It was therefore fortunate for us that we were overtaken by rain before we were out on the slippery clay.

We waited till the desert had dried up again, and then we joined forces with a caravan which came from the south.

It was pitch dark when we began to move.

A fire was set going, and the camels were laden by its light.

Then we started, the fire disappeared, and night and the desert lay before us.

Only the ring of bells disturbed the silence.

We could not see where we were going, but had to trust our riding camels.

The Persians marched all the morning and most of the day without a halt; the strength of both men and camels is strained to the uttermost in order to get through the desert before the next rain comes--and it may come at any moment.

After a short rest we hasten northwards again, for there is no question of halting for the night.

The darkness seems interminable, but at length it begins to grow light again.

Still the Persians do not stop, so there is nothing for me to do but to struggle to keep up with them.

"Keep awake, sir!"

shouts Gulam Hussein; "you can sleep when we get to the other side."

Another day passes, and again we rest awhile to give the camels some straw and to drink a cup of tea ourselves.

Scarcely have we begun to enjoy the rest, however, when the chimes of the bells ring out again.

The caravan is already on the move, so we pack up and follow in its trail.

The sky seems very unpromising, and is clouded all over.

The desert is as level as a floor; not a mound as high as a kneeling camel.

The sun sinks in the west.

Like a red-hot cannon-ball it shines through a rift between dark clouds, and a shaft of dazzling red rays streams over the desert, the surface of which shines like a purple sea.

To the north the sky is of a dark violet colour, and against this background the camels stand out brick-red.

The sun sets, the colours grow pale, and the long shadows which the camels lately cast far away over the ground fade away.

Another night rises up from the east.

It grows darker and darker, the caravan is lost to view, but the bells ring out with a clear resonance.

On we go without stop or rest.

This night is more trying, for we had not a wink of sleep the night before.

The clouds break in the zenith, and the moon looks down on our progress.

The camels are seen again and shadows fall again over the desert.

Here it is as bare and desolate as on the face of the moon.

At midnight the sky becomes dark once more.

The Persians have clambered up on to their camels, and the swaying motion soon carries them into the land of dreams.

Soon no one is awake but the leader, who guides the first camel, and myself, who am riding on the last.

Suddenly heavy drops begin to fall, and in a minute the rain pelts down on camels, loads, and sleepers.

In a second the pace of the caravan is changed.

Hear how hurriedly and anxiously the bells swing and beat!

They peal as if to awaken soldiers and citizens in a burning town.

Now the rain patters down on the level desert and the camels begin to slip.

We must hasten if our lives are dear to us, or the desert will suck us in at the eleventh hour.

The men shout to urge on the camels.

Now the bells clang as though to wake up the dead to judgment.

There goes a camel down in the mire.

Poor animals, they are lost on such ground, for they have not hoofs like horses, but soft callous pads.

When they slip they do so thoroughly and suddenly.

All four legs fly up in one direction, and the heavy body with the loads thumps down in the other.

It is bad enough for the camel, but still worse for his rider.

A

moment before he sat so well packed up, longing for the edge of the desert sea, and now he lies sprawling in the slush.

One after another the camels fall and have to be helped up again.

All this causes delay, and meanwhile the clay is gradually becoming softer.

At every step the camels sink in deeper, the rain still pelts down, and the bells ring jerkily.

If they cease to ring, it will be because the desert has conquered; at this very moment they stop.

"What is the matter?"

I call out.

"We are at the Devil's ditch," answers a voice in the darkness.

The bells ring slowly again as the camels wade one after the other through a trench full of salt water.

I tighten my knees when my turn comes.

I cannot see the water, but I hear it spurting and splashing round the legs of the camels in front of me.

Now my camel slides down a nasty mud bank.

He slithers and wriggles about to keep himself up, and then he, too, tramps through the water and scrambles up the other side.

"Tamarisks," I hear some one shout.

Welcome sound!

It means that we are safe, for nothing grows in the salt desert.

When we come to the first tamarisks we are again on sandy ground.

Then all danger is past, and what does it matter if we are dead tired?

Two more hours and we reach a village.

There Gulam Hussein makes ready a chicken and some eggs, and then I lie down in a hut and sleep as I have never slept before.

[Illustration: PLATE VI.

TEBBES.

The tree in the foreground is a huge tamarisk.

] THE OASIS OF TEBBES

Any one who has not travelled himself for weeks together through the desert can scarcely conceive what it is to come at length to an oasis.

An oasis is to the desert wanderer what a peaceful island with its sheltered anchorage is to mariners.

Oases are like stars in the dark vault of heaven, like moments of happiness and prosperity in a man's life.

If you had roamed for two months in the wilderness, like myself and my Persians, you would be able to understand our feelings when we at last saw the date-palms of Tebbes beckoning to us in the distance (see map, p. 73).

A lofty minaret rises above the little town, which is surrounded by a wall (Plate VI.

).

Within are old buildings, mosques, and a fort with towers.

Outside the town are tilled fields and palm groves.

Spring had come when we pitched our tents on a meadow in the shade of thick dark-green palms.

There was a rustle and pleasant whisper among the hard fronds when the spring storms swept over the country.

We were tired of the everlasting dull yellow tint of the desert and were delighted with the fresh verdure.

Outside my tent purled a brook of fine cool water, all the more agreeable after the intense drought of the desert.

A nightingale sang in the crown of the palm above my tent.

He plays an important part in Persian poetry under the name of _bulbul_.

If you were in some mysterious manner transferred to Tebbes, you would on the very first evening wonder what was the curious serenade which you heard from the desert.

If you sat at the fall of day reading at the door of your tent, you would look up from your book and listen.

You would have an uneasy feeling and be uncomfortable at being alone in the tent.

But after the same serenade had been repeated every evening as regular as the sunset, you would become accustomed to it, and at length trouble yourself no more about it.

It is only the jackals singing their evening song.

The word "jackal" is Persian, and the jackal is allied to the dog, the wolf, and the fox.

He is a beast of prey and seeks his food at night.

He is not large, is yellowish-grey in colour, has pointed ears and small, keen eyes, and holds his tail erect, not hanging down like the wolf's. Nothing edible comes amiss to him, but he prefers chickens and grapes to fallen caravan animals.

If he can find nothing else, he steals dates in the palm gardens, especially when ripe fruits have fallen after heavy storms.

The jackal is, indeed, a shameless, impudent little rascal.

One night a pack of jackals sneaked into our garden and carried off our only cock under the very noses of the dogs.

We were awakened by the noise of a terrible struggle between the two forces, but the jackals got the better of it and we heard the despairing cackle of the cock dying away in the desert.

Heaven knows where the jackals remain as long as the sun is up!

In zoological text-books it is stated that they dwell in holes, but I could see no holes round Tebbes, and yet jackals come in troops to the oasis every night.

They are as mysterious as the desert; they are found everywhere and nowhere.

As soon as the sun sinks below the horizon and the darkness spreads its veil over the silent desert, and the palms doze off, waiting for the return of the sun, then begins the jackals' serenade.

It sounds like a short, sharp laugh rising and falling, a plaintive whine increasing in strength and dying away again, answered by another pack in another direction; a united cry of anguish from children in trouble and calling for help.

They say to one another, "Comrades, we are hungry, let us seek about for food," and gather together from their unknown lairs.

Then they steal cautiously to the skirts of the oasis, hop over walls and bars and thieve on forbidden ground.

These insignificant noisy footpads live on the refuse and offal of the desert from Cape Verde in the uttermost west of the Old World to the interior of India; but their home is not in the silent desert alone.

When the military bands strike up at the clubs in Simla, you have only to put your head out of the window to hear the mournful, piteous, and distressed howl of the jackals.

They are not always to be treated lightly, for in 1882 jackals killed 359 men in Bengal alone.

Especially are they a terrible danger when hydrophobia rages among them, as the experiences of the last Boundary Commission in Seistan showed.

A mad jackal sneaked into the camp one night and bit a sleeping man in the face.

Within six weeks the man was dead.

Others stole into the natives' huts and lay in ambush, waiting for an opportunity to bite.

Perhaps the worst incident occurred on a dark winter's night, when a north wind was raging and sweeping the dust along the ground.

A mad jackal came into the Englishmen's camp and crept into a tent where several men were sleeping.

Fortunately he only set his teeth in a felt rug.

This wakened the sleepers, however, and they at once started up and looked for weapons.

The camp consisted of three sections, and more than a hundred tethered camels.

In the pitchy darkness it was impossible to see where the jackal went, but the camels could be heard shrieking with fear, and thus it was only too clear where the brute was.

When day broke seventy-eight bitten dromedaries were counted.

They were isolated from the others, and killed as soon as they showed signs of sickness, while the dogs and goats which had been bitten by the jackal were shot at once.

Twenty years ago I myself had a little adventure with jackals.

I was riding with a couple of servants and some horses to the Caspian shore from the interior of Persia, and encamped one evening at a village in the Elburz Mountains.

The caravanserai was notorious for its vermin, so I preferred to make myself comfortable in a garden with fruit trees and poplars, protected by a wall five feet high and without any gates.

We had to climb over the wall in order to get in.

I had a saddle for a pillow and lay wrapped in a felt rug and a cloak.

The remains of my supper, bread, honey, and apples, stood on my two small leather trunks.

When it grew dark my men went off to the village and I rolled myself up and went to sleep.

Two hours later I was awakened by a scratching noise at the trunks and sat up to listen, but could hear nothing but the murmur of a small brook close at hand.

The darkness was intense, only a little starlight passing faintly through the foliage.

So I went to sleep again.

A little later I was roused once more by the same noise, and heard a tearing and tugging at the straps.

Then I jumped up and distinguished half a dozen jackals disappearing like shadows among the poplars.

There was no more sleep for me that night.

It was all I could do to keep the importunate beasts at a distance.

If I kept quiet for a minute they were up again, tearing the leathern straps, and would not make off until I struck a box with my riding whip.

They soon became accustomed even to this and drew back only a few steps.

Then I remembered the apples, and as soon as the jackals crept up again, I threw one of them with all my strength into the ruck, and used them as missiles till the last apple had disappeared into the darkness.

Most of my shots were misses, for I only once heard a howl from one of the impudent animals.

The night seemed endless, but at length the day dawned between the poplars, and the jackals jumped quietly over the wall.

Then I should have liked some breakfast, but there was not a bit of the supper left;

the jackals had taken it all.

However, I had a sound sleep instead.

I

heard afterwards that the jackals in that country are so vicious that two or three of them will attack a man, so in future I always had my servants sleeping near me.

While speaking of jackals we must not forget the hyæna, for this animal is one of the denizens of the desert, though it is of another genus.

The hyæna is a singular animal, neither dog nor cat, but a mixture of both and larger than either.

It is of a dirty greyish-brown colour with black stripes or patches, has a rounded head with black muzzle and eyes, and short hind legs, so that the bristly back slopes downwards.

It prowls about for food at night, and in western Persia comes down from its hiding-places in the mountains to the caravan roads in quest of fallen asses, horses and camels.

If corpses are not buried deep enough it scratches them up from beneath the tombstones, for it lives almost exclusively on dead and corrupted flesh.

Thus the four-footed inhabitants of the desert prowl around the outskirts of Tebbes and share the country with panthers, wild asses and graceful elegant gazelles.

Tebbes itself lies lonely and forgotten like an island in the ocean.

The principal caravan road connecting the oasis with the outer world runs north-eastwards to the holy town of Meshed, whither many pilgrims flock.

From Meshed it is only a few days' journey through a mountainous tract to the frontier between Persia and Russian Asia.

There lie Transcaspia, Samarcand, Bukhara, Turkestan, and the Kirghiz Steppe.

This road would take us out of our way to India, but while we halt at Tebbes I can tell you something about the country it passes through.

V ON THE KIRGHIZ STEPPE (1893-5)