[Book Reviews]

Abstract

NOTWITHSTANDING some serious drawbacks, this work will be accepted as a useful contribution to our knowledge of a country about which much ignorance still prevails. It embodies the results of a journey made through the central provinces of Persia last year by a promising member of the Bengal Civil Service en route for England. By departing, wherever possible, from the beaten tracks along the main highways between the Persian Gulf and the Caspian, the traveller has succeeded in collecting much useful information regarding many districts about which very little was hitherto known. But the journey having been specially undertaken at some personal inconvenience in the interests of geographical research, it seems all the more surprising that more forethought was not shown by the explorer in qualifying himself for the task. A little time devoted to a study of the broad principles of geology and botany, as well as to the simple methods of taking altitudes, would have enabled him to turn his opportunities to far better account. As it is, these branches of science are almost entirely neglected, and the space which might have been usefully occupied, with such subjects, is too often sacrificed to trivial details irritating to the reader, and swelling the work to undue proportions. As Damávand was ascended, it would have been more satisfactory, for instance, to have checked the altitude of that famous cone (18,600 feet), taken some years ago by the Russian Caspian Survey, than to be told that at one place there were two little shrines “with small blue domes, date groves and water,” at another a ruined mud fort, further on many other ruined mud forts, that one man asked him “endless questions about England which I answered to the best of my ability for the space of two hours,” that another “gave me a good dinner,” and so on for page after page. Nevertheless some important work, chiefly of a topographical character, was carried out and carefully recorded in the region between Shiraz and Lar, in the Saidábád and Karmán districts, in the neighbourhood of Yazd, and especially in the Bakhtari highlands west of Isfahan. Here the orography and hydrography of the Chahar Mahal and Zarda-kuh uplands were carefully surveyed, and a fresh route explored thence northwards to Gilpaigan. As, according to the latest accounts, the Bakhtari hillmen are again threatening to give trouble to the Prince-Governor of Isfahán, this information may soon prove valuable. These fierce nomads are of the same race and speech as the Kurds, who committed such havoc in the Urmia district last year, and who seem to be again preparing for fresh raids on the Turco-Persian frontier between Azerbaiján and Armenia.

Six Months in Persia.

By Edward Stack. 2 vols. (London: Sampson Low and Co., 1882.)