'Military report on Tehran and adjacent Provinces of North-West Persia (including the Caspian Littoral)' [‎230v] (465/610)

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ponies, preferably those of the country which are inured to its
difficulty. Cavalry can pass over them in single file, and open
sections, where they can deploy, are rare. Horses can only
go at a faster pace than a walk over short stretches, where going
is better than the average, and it is often necessary to dismount
and lead them.
With the exception of the Tehran-Firuzkuh-Barfarush
route, none of them could be improved and rendered passable
for camel, much less for wheeled transport, without prodigious
labour and expense.
They are of varying degrees of badness, and their character
istics are excessively steep gradients and zigzags, loose jagged
stones, boulders and large slabs of rock.
North of the “ Northern watershed The boundary between adjacent drainage basins. (See p. 94),” in addition
to these obstacles, in the upper forest levels the rock slabs become
so slippery after rain that only animals of the country can avoid
frequent falls.
Lower down in the 1 Mly inland; {foot hills) unless stonepaved
and kept in repair, they are a tortuous succession of great
boulders and mud holes, more suggestive of a torrent bed than
of a road, and, where stone gives place to soft earth, the slopes
are furrowed into a series of corrugations resembling a stair
case. These corrugations, a speciality of Mazandaran and Gilan,
are trodden by the feet of generations of pack animals and are
the equivalent of the ruts worn by wheels. The hollows are
12 to 15 deep and usually filled with mud and water. The
ndeges between them are about 8" wide and rounded and become
very slippery after rain. Animals of the country plant their
feet m the hollows, but foreign animals endeavour to walk on
the ridges and fall. 2
These are the features of all the main routes leading from
the plateau to the Caspian and the side tracks, which lead from
yi age to village, are of course worse. To leave a main route
an favour of a short cut, especially North of the “ Northern water
shed, is to court trouble, and if ever a native describes a route
as bad his word should be unreservedly accepted.
between Taia^Mn^e 1 iS / Zar £ ham (thousand windings) of Talaghan,
belo^ Xzaalne for nnn^ (se f 1 No v ; 0 below > wh ere the path is seen from
low oing for about 3,000 up the bare mountain side to the ridge.
were comtd?telv n 1 ^! Jur v V0 Ar " eut ine mules with the writer’s party
until their loads were s l ?P ei 7 ro , cks an<i wer e unable to proceed
from a passing convoy. an ' P laced on Persian mules commandeered