'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎533] (596/714)

THE NORTH-WEST AND WESTERN PROVINCES
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liave been an island twenty-five miles in circumference; on the
other hand, local tradition is in favour of expansion, rather than
contraction, and there is alleged to have been a causeway for
traffic across what is now the bed of the lake to Urnmiah. Its
most peculiar features are its great shallowness, rendering it for
the most part little more than a flooded swamp, and its abnormal
saline properties, which in salt (of which it contains 22 per cent.)
and iodine excel even those of the Dead Sea. The bottom of the
lake has been proved by soundings Measurements of the depth of a body of water. to consist of a series of terraces
or ledges, the maximum depth being forty-five feet, and the average
depth being perhaps fifteen or sixteen feet, though the bather can
advance for two miles from the edge without getting out of his
depth. The sensations of the latter, if I may judge by the analo
gous case of the Dead Sea, are not to be envied; 1 for it is impos-
' n
sible to dive or even swim, the limbs being thrown up to the surface,
and a thick crust of salt being deposited upon the body, the eye
lids, and in the hair. When the wind blows on Lake Urumiah,
sheets of saline foam are seen scudding along the surface, and the
salt is left upon the shore in a solid efflorescence, sometimes several
inches thick. No fish or molluscs live in the waters, whose sole
living contents are a species of small jelly-fish, which sustain the
swans and wild fowl that are occasionally seen. The banks are
covered with a thick and treacherous slime, composed partly of
salt, partly of decomposed vegetable matter, and emitting a horrible
effluvium. Of the sixty islets clustered in a group towards the
southern end, three are either cultivated or used as pasture-ground,
the largest being five miles in length.
It might be imagined that so extensive a sheet of water,
surrounded by such large cities and fertile plains, and said to be
singularly free from storms, would have given birth to
av gato ^ busy and profitable navigation, and have been ploughed
by the keels of numerous craft. It is not so in Persia. No
Persian, not even a Turkish Persian, ever ventured a yard on to
the treacherous element if he could possibly help it. The metaphor
of ' burning your boats can have no home in a country where
there are no boats to burn. The instincts of lucre alone account
1 Of the contrary opinion was Wagner, who said: ' I can affirm from personal
experience that ten baths in the German Ocean do not create so much stimulus
in the-skin, or so much exhilaration in the nerves as the water of this lake. It
is five times as salt as the sea at the Equator. You come out of its waters as
red as a crab (lobster ?) and, moreover, greatly invigorated and refreshed.'