Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/650

620 PERSIA [GEOGRAPHY. except the Alburz (Elburz), and to a lesser extent in the Khurasan hills. riains. The Khuzistan delta is cited as the only plain of extent and importance at sea-level. In the north-west, that part of the Moghan steppe which belongs to Persia and the delta of the Safid Rud are large and fertile tracts. St John writes : " Inland the long and narrow plains between the ridges rise gradu ally from 1000 feet to eight times that height in the valleys between the ridges on the east side of the western water-parting, and 4, 5, and 6000 farther south and east. The plains of Isfahan, Shiraz, and Persepolis are about 5000 feet ; that of Karmiiu somewhat higher. The valleys of Adarbaijan present alluvial slopes furrowed by torrents, and the only extensive tableland in Persia, that of Sultdniah. "As they recede from the east and north, the intervals between the ridges are wider, and the rainfall smaller, till grassy valleys are replaced by gravelly deserts, which culminate in wastes of shifting sand. The valley between Abadah and Yazd, a prolongation of the Zaindarud valley, contains the first of these sandy wastes, which, under the influence of the strong south-easterly winds, occasionally invade the neighbouring cultivated tracts. The- original city of Rhages, south-east of Tehran, is said to have been abandoned on this account." River Estimating the extent of Persia proper at 610,000 square drainage, miles, St John thus distributes the drainage : (1) into the Arabian Sea and Persian Gulf, 130,000; (2) into the Caspian and Aral Seas, 100,000 ; (Shinto the Sistan Lake, 40,000 ; (4) into the large lake of Urmiya or Urumiyah, 20,000 ; (5) interior drainage, 320,000. No. (1) comprises the south-west provinces and the whole of the coast-region up to the small port of Gwatar in Baluchistan ; (2) relates to the tracts south, south-west, and south-east of the Cas pian ; (3) is the tract adjudicated to Persia, including the HAmun and part of the Helmand basin ; (4) is a compara tively small area on the western frontier containing the basin of Lake Urmiya, shut off from the rest of the inland draining of Persia ; (5) takes in Ispahan, Karman, and the province of Khurasan, with the Dasht-i-Kavir, or "Great Salt Desert." He points out that the area draining into the ocean consists of a long strip nearly parallel to the Tigris and sea-coast without a single protrusion in land, but is uncertain whether an outlet exists from the Bampiir plain in Persian Baluchistan to the sea. A later traveller, Floyer, mentions the names of two rivers de bouching on the coast, namely the Sadaich and Gabrig, which might represent such outlets, but their courses have not been traced with sufficient completeness to supply a solution to the problem. If the native evidence taken by Major Goldsmid at Fanoch in 1866 can be relied on, the river entering the pass of that name from the highlands of Bampiir, after undergoing two or three changes of nomen clature, passes out into the ocean as the KAlig. Caspian According to St John, a narrow strip of land, not more basin. th an 39 to 50 miles wide, along the southern coast of the Caspian, drains into that sea. On the west it suddenly widens out to a depth of 250 miles, meeting the watershed of the Tigris on the one side and that of the Euphrates and Lake Van on the other, and embracing between the two the basin of Lake Urmiya, which forms with the basin of Lake Van what may be termed the supplementary plateau of Armenia, differing only from the Persian and Helmand basins in its superior altitude and smaller area. On the east the watershed of the Caspian gradually in creases in breadth, the foot of the scarp extending con siderably to the north of the south-east angle of that sea, three degrees east of which it turns to the south-east, parallel to the axis of the Kuren and Kopet ranges, which, | as before stated, are a prolongation of the Caucasus. A j little short of Herat the Caspian water-parting turns east- ; ward, separating the valleys of the Hari Hud and HAriit rivers. West of Herat the desert plateau of KhAf divides the Caspian from the Helmand basin. The three rivers belonging essentially to Persia, in reference to the Caspian watershed, are the Kizil Uzain or Safid Hud on the south-west and the Atrak and Gurgan at the south-eastern corner of that inland sea. The first is stated by St John to drain about 25,000 square miles of country east and south of the Urmiya basin. According to Colonel Stewart, the Atrak has its source in the HazAr Masjid range of mountains, a distance, probably, of 250 miles as the crow flies, from the river mouth. The Gurgan rises to the west of it and passes to the sea south of the Atrak. Observing that the Taj and, taking a sweep round Sarakhs, forms a swamp in the Atak about the 58th meridian, the same authority explains that as far south as 30 N. lat. " the eastern slopes of the ranges which shut off the valley of the Helmand from the deserts of eastern Persia drain directly towards the Sistan Lake. South of that parallel the surplus water flows by several channels in a south-easterly direction, or away from the lake. About latitude 29, the water-parting of the Baluchistan mountain-system, running east and west, changes the direction of these streams, and collects them into a single channel, which, under the name of the Mashkul river, bursts through the northern scarp of the Baluch hills into the Kharan desert. Here it takes a north westerly course, thus reversing the original direction of its waters, which are lost in the desert not far from their most northern sources. It is very probable that these, finding a subterranean channel some distance farther to the north, aid to fill the Zirreh swamp, the southern of the three depressions which, united by flood-waters, form the Hamun or Sistan Lake." The great central area of Persia, included in the water sheds he has described, " forms a figure nearly triangular, with a base running south-west about 1000 miles long, and nearly equal sides north and east of 700 miles." St John observes that the streams draining southern Stre- and western Persia into the sea diminish regularly in im- of v portance from north-west to south-east. He notes the^ Diyalah and Karkhah flowing into the Tigris from the mountains of Kurdistan ; the Diz and KArun, which unite below Shustar (Sinister), and reach the Shattu l- Arab at Muhamrah ; and the Jarahi and Tab, which with the KArun form " the delta of Persian Arabistan, the most extensive and fertile plain in Persia." After these he lays stress upon the fact that not a single stream unfordable at all seasons bars the passage of the traveller along the coast till he reaches the Indus. Those rising amid the high mountains north of Bushahr and Bandar- AbbAs are, with the exception of the Mira, which debouches at 60 miles below Bushahr, nameless in the most trustworthy maps ; and in Persian Baluchistan we have the Jagi n, Gabrig, Sadaich, RAbij, Kair, and KAju. The KArun merits especial notice as a navigable river for small steamers up to within a mile or two of Shustar, though not favourable to the establishment of a regular service, owing to the existence of rapids at Ahwaz. By land there are perhaps somewhat more than 100 miles from Muhamrah to Shustar ; and Colonel Champain, an excellent authority, states that from Shustar to Ispahan the distance is as nearly as possible the same as from ShirAz to Ispahan, the high road for ordinary travellers passing to and fro between Tehran and the sea-coast. Little need be said on the streams having no outlet to the sea, the water of which is utilized by cultivators both before they reach the alluvial plain between the ranges and afterwards in irrigating the banks. Referring to these St John notes the constant affluents which prevent the rapid exhaustion of water, and the salt swamps or lakes formed by the rivers at points far removed from their source. Six of these inland streams he mentions by name, viz., the Aji ChAi and Jaghatu, flowing into the salt-lake of Urmiya ; the Hamadan Rud or KAra Su and the ShurAb, flowing eastwards to the Salt Desert ; the Zainda Rud, a river of Ispahan, lost in an unexplored swamp ; and the Kiir or Bandamir, which forms the salt-lake of Niris. He sees