'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎360] (413/714)

360 PERSIA
reminiscences of countries very far removed from Persia. Rice is
the staple of every-day consumption, and an adult male is said to
consume ten ounces at breakfast, twenty-two ounces at lunch, and
twenty-two ounces at supper; which, on the whole, is not a bad
performance.
From the Astrabad province and city, which have merited
a somewhat minute particularisation, I turn to the adjoining
Maritime provinces of Mazanderaii and Gilan. And here I shall
provinces fi rs t give an account of those natural features and pro
ducts which they share in common, before turning to individual
cities or sites. I have already pointed out that these provinces
consist of a strip of country rising from the shores of the Caspian,
itself eighty-five feet below the sea level, to the summits of the
Elburz, possessing a mean elevation of 12,000 to 13,000 feet. It
may readily, therefore, be conjectured that a region, however
narrow, that embraces so many zones of climatic influence, will
not admit of a single classification. It should rather be divided
into four belts or sections, which may be thus distinguished and
described.
First conies the maritime edge of these provinces, where they
are lapped by the waves of the Caspian. And here we are at once
^ ^ ^ confronted with a phenomenon of remarkable but uniform
occurrence, allusion to which has been made in an earlier
chapter. The wash of the surf and the violence of the prevalent
north and north-western winds on the Caspian have combined
to pile up along this stretch of shore a long chain of sandhills,
sometimes from twenty to thirty feet in height, and from 200
yards to a quarter of a mile in width. On the inner side of these
sandhills the rivers descending from the mountains, surcharged
with alluvial deposit, have, in their inability to force a way to the
sea, outspread themselves in low morasses and lagoons, where the
waters chafe idly to and fro, or lie stagnant, a nursery of humid
and poisonous exhalations. In cases where the current has with
difficulty cleared a way for itself to the sea, the incoming resistance
of the surf creates an outer bar, which renders the lake useless for
purposes of navigation. These murdabs, or dead waters, succeed
each other along this entire fringe of coast, the most notable
examples being the lagoons of Enzeli at the western, and of
Astrabad at the eastern extremity, between which occur the cognate
murdabs of Lengarud and Meshed-i-Ser. The inner banks of these