'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎314] (395/748)

314 PERSIA
a past which has vanished from memory, and almost from know
ledge, is not the least among the recompenses that await the
traveller in this romantic portion of the Shah's dominions ; and I
at once urge and envy the scholar who, with time and means at
his disposal, shall in the future visit and exhaustively examine the
whole of this interesting region. I believe that he may return
with a spoil that will shed a valuable light upon history, besides
conferring upon himself well-merited distinction.
Further to the south, amid the mountain ranges inhabited by
various tribes of the Lur family, other remains have been discovered
Other and described. Of these the most important are some
remains sculptures, of which drawings were made by De Bode, 1
in a gorge called the Teng-i-Saulek, at a distance of seven farsaklis
from Behbehan, in the territory of the Bahmei tribe of Bakhtiaris.
At a Mamasenni village named Nurabad, between Behbehan and
Kazerun, and on the banks of a small river, is a great Sassanian
bas-relief, representing a seated monarch and his courtiers, not
unlike one of the tablets at Shapur. It is called Naksh-i-Bahram^
and the plain Sahra-i-Bahram. 2
The most remarkable natural feature of the region which I
have been describing is, undoubtedly, the splendid and self-willed
TheKamn torrent of the Upper Karun. This river, of the lower
river reaches of which I shall have so much to say in the
ensuing chapter, is called, in these volumes, by the name which
it commonly bears, alike in Arabistan and in popular terminology.
Its true orthography, however, would appear to be Kuran, from
the Kuh-i-rang, or Variegated Mountain, in which it rises. 3 Though
parts of the upper course of this great river have been followed
or traced by the travellers to whom I have so frequently referred^
and though its reputed source was visited by Stack in 1881, it was
not till two years ago (1890) that its impetuous and zigzag current
was tracked to its real birthplace, and pursued through the gorges
and valleys of its parent mountains, by Major Sawyer, of the Indian
Intelligence Department. In the very heart of Bakhtiari Land
stands the lofty mountain cluster known as the Kuh-i-rang, or
1 Engraved and published by Flandin and Coste, vol. iv. pis. 224-7.
2 Fwfo Flandin and Coste, vol. iv. p]. 229; De Bode, vol. ii. p. 225; Stolze,
Persepolis, vol. ii. pi. 146.
3 The Portuguese writers, De Barros and Cotinho, called it Rio Carom. Other
appellations in European writers of the last two centuries have been Correng^
Kureng, Kuren, Keren, and Couran.