'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎534] (597/714)

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for the fact that Lake Shahi is navigated at all. In 1838, an
uncle of the King, being Governor-General of Azerbaijan, in order
to secure a monopoly of the carrying trade, ordered all private
boats to be destroyed. The same intelligent policy has been
followed by his successors ; and at this moment the Governor of
Maragha, who enjoys the monopoly, allows only three small decked
boats of twenty tons burden, which ply between the opposite shores
of the lake, and the working of which he sublets to a contractor
who pays Imn 800Z. a year, and makes a substantial profit out of
the enterprise. As Colonel Stewart says, what is wanted is a
small line of steamers running between the southern and northern
extremities, and transporting the grain from the rich cornlands
south of the lake where it is plentiful and cheap, to the towns of
Khoi and Tabriz where it is comparatively dear. But I suppose
we must wait for this, as for all good things in Persia.
Near the eastern shore of the lake, and at about six miles from
the village of Dehkharegan, are the pits or springs from which is
Marble extracted the famous semi-transparent marble, sometimes
rits called after the neighbouring town of Maragha, some
times after Tabriz. A number of springs, clustered within an
area of half a mile in circumference, are constantly bubbling up
and precipitating the limestone which they hold in solution. This is
deposited in the form of horizontal layers, which are like a thin
crust to start with, and can be cracked or broken, but which
gradually solidify into hard blocks, with an average thickness of
seven or eight inches, the best of which are believed to have been
formed when the springs had a much higher temperature than the
present (65° Fahr.). When quarried this petrifaction can be sawn
either in the thinnest plates, when it is nearly transparent, and is
sometimes used for windows, or in more substantial slabs, in which
form it is much used for pavements and mural wainscoting. It is
a singularly beautiful substance, being of a pink, or greenish, or
milk-white colour, streaked with reddish or copper-coloured veins
(from the oxide which it contains); and I have seen beautiful
samples of it in the palaces and mosques of the East. I have very
little doubt that the wainscoting of the Gur Amir, or Tomb of
1 imur, at Samarkand, which I have described in my former work, 1
and which has puzzled all travellers, is composed of this marble,
which there is nothing more natural than that the great conqueror
1 Russia in Central Asia, pp. 218-20.
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