'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎116] (151/714)

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PERSIA
succession Fathiabad, two miles from Ivucliaii \ Sarkhan, seven
miles ; Jafirabad, a collection of low cubical domes, fifteen miles,
and Dashtabad. Black goats'-hair tents scattered here and there
showed that not all the Kurds had taken to sedentary life, but that
some retained their nomad instincts ^ while an occasional deseited
village marked the site of a destroyed hmat or exhausted spring.
^ -r- -T
At Kelata, 1 about twenty-two miles from Kuchan, 1 dismissed the
victoria, with instructions to go home on the morrow ; andmounting
my horse, and leaving the high road to Meshed and the telegraph
poles on the right, continued for another eight miles on the level to
Chamgir, a small village some way short of Radkan. As we rode
along the plain, now quite destitute of vegetation, a lovely lake of
water, the creature of the Eastern mirage, trembled and glittered
on the horizon, and ever receded while we advanced. towards
evening the north-east hills, on which the declining sun shone with
full orb, acquired a startling glory with tints of rose and coral; the
opposite range, plunged in the shadow, was suffused with an opaline
vapour that temporarily endowed it with almost ethereal beauty.
Presently they both relapsed, the one into a russet brown, the
other into a cold and ashen grey. I camped in an orchard outside
the village.
At one of the hamlets which we had passed during the day I
saw a decidedly primitive manner of threshing barley straw. A
Primitive threshing-floor was prepared of trodden earth outside the
threshing walls, and upon this the straw was spread out; while a
long wooden cylinder or roller, armed with big wooden spikes, like
the barrel of a colossal musical box, and drawn by bullocks, was
driven slowly round and round over the heaps. The result was
that the straw was chopped up into small pieces, which constitute
the hoh, or fodder, that is the common food of horses and mules in
Persia. This mode of threshing and the implement employed are
as old and unalterable as are most of the habits and utensils of the
East. It is described at length by Chardin over two hundred
years ago, 2 and by even earlier travellers, and will doubtless be
visible in remote hamlets two hundred years hence.
XX. paces of this chanell, than digge they an other pitt like to the first, and so „
from pitt to pitt they conveigh the water alongest these chanells whither they
woll.' But the system is older yet, for it is described by Polybius (lib. x. 25).
1 Kelata is the plural, and signifies a collection of villages or hamlets, each Oi
which is usually distinguished by a separate title.
2 Voyages (edit. Langles), vol. iv. pp. 105-10G.