'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎92] (125/714)

PERSIA
a little science into tlif j prrx-eeding-. but died a month later;
and if native entrineering talent ha- -ince been thought sufficient,
it is a poor look-out for the durability of the undertaking. The
labourers I saw at work were engaged in the mo-t leisurely fashion ;
and if the Malek-et-Tajar complete- hi- contract in double the
time specified I shall be very much -urprised.
Passing down the valley in a south-ea-terly direction from Baj
Girha, the present route lead- through stony hills and glens that
reminded me strangely of the forlorn belt ot country in
and^irnam Palestine that is crossed between Jerusalem and Samaria.
Kul1 A little further we entered a narrow defile, which was so
steep that I was obliged to dismount and lead down my horse. Small
watch-towers perched like eyries on the cliff tops, and a rudely
constructed wall of stones built across the ravine, were reminders
of the not vet forgotten days of Turkoman forays. At the end of
the crorcre we emerged upon a small circular plain, in which the.
villa ire of Durbadam takes advantage of the presence of a mountain
stream, deriving therefrom both its mison detre and wherewithal
of life. A square enclosure with high mud walls and projecting
towers at the angles was a sight with which I was to become daily
if not hourly familiar later on. and which was an elementary
obligation of tactics imposed by the Turkomans upon every village
within a hundred miles of their border. At Durbadam (11 miles)
I spread a carpet in an orchard and lunched.
Following the gorge by which the river Sharek enters the
valley, and where the new road will cross the stream several times,
and will be verv liable to demolition by floods, we came into more
open country, and passed the first of two villages known as Imam
Kuli on the left. Hearing sounds of lamentation proceeding from
a miserable hovel, and observing a circle of women and children
weeping and bewailing outside. I went up and found that one of
the natives of the village, a husband and a father, had been killed
bv a fall of rock, while blasting on the new roadway, in the gorge
which I had just quitted. The dead body, naked, but covered
with a sheet, lay with its feet in the doorway. I gave the poor
creatures a few Wans, as they looked miserably poor. Outside the
village I passed a shallow gravelly trench dug by the roadside,
where, amid a little cluster of stony mounds, the hapless victim
was about to be laid to rest. At 3 P.M., in a wider opening of the
valley, dignified by occasional clumps of poplar, I reached the main
„Wlvlow