'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎142] (177/714)

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PERSIA
so amazing a succession of natural phenomena, each one of which
would attract a stream of pilgrims in any better-known land.
At this point we finally left the mountains and debouched on
to the eastern continuation of the same plain from which I had
Scenery of diverged a week before at Radkan. The moment, there-
North- fore, is an opportune one for casting an eye in swift
eastern
Khorasan retrospect over the country and surroundings in which I
had been travelling since I entered Persia, and which embrace the
least known and yet most typical characteristics of North-eastern
Khorasan. I summed up my impressions, without, however,
describing my journeys, in the ' Times in these words :
' After leaving Kuchan, I struck eastwards through the moun
tains, and spent eight days in wandering about amid the mountain
valleys of this rugged and almost inaccessible corner of Khorasan.
Being hampered by a camp and mules, I was limited to about
twenty-five miles a day, but even so succeeded in traversing about
200 miles of tins interesting and rarely visited country. The
names of most of the villages are not upon any English map. and
only a few larger or more notable localities, such as the famous
stronghold of Ivelat-i-Nadiri, are known to European ears. It is
astonishing how difficult it is in these parts to procure reliable
information about anything, most of all about that which should
be best known—namely, the distance between adjoining places.
A farsakh, nominally about four miles, is the sole unit of measure
ment, but. judging by my own experience, it may mean anything
from two to five. The commonest thing is to be told that a place
is half a farsakh distant—a term which, being used to imply any
fraction less than the whole farsakh, may describe a distance of
either one mile or three miles and a half. The scenery through
which I travelled, and which may be said to extend over the whole
of North-eastern Khorasan, is singularly uniform in its character
istics. A series of lofty mountain ridges, with an axis inclined
from north-west to south-east, run parallel to each other at varying
distances, the intervening hollows being in the more northern
parts deep gorges admitting little more than a torrent bed at their
bottom, while further south they widen into valleys watered by
mountain streams and dotted with villages, and eventually into
broad, rich plains, such as that of Kuchan to the north and
Nishapur to the south of the Binalud Kuh mountains. Transverse
ravines cut these ridges, often at right angles, and provide a way