'The Transactions of the Bombay Geographical Society. From January 1863 to December 1864. (Edited by the Secretary.) Volume XVII.' [‎155] (324/524)

FROM BUSHIRE TO SHIRAUZ.
155
49. I could have wished to return from Shirauz to Bushire by the
Southern or Ferozeabad route, hut my followers were weakened by
fever, and I did not feel justified in unnecessarily exposing them at the
hottest season of the year.
•/
50. The Southern route may however be generally described as
sufficiently level and inhabited to Ferozeabad, which is the chief town
of the Ilkhanee of the Eliants, as being sandy barren, in part hilly
from Ferozeabad onwards to Ferashband, and thence through the
Dashtee country to the Bushire plain. Low brush covers many of the
tracts passed over in this latter postion of the route. As to the Eliants,
it is stated the Ilkhanee can place from 10 to 12 thousand men in the
field. He has, in fact, power over all the tribes in this part of Persia.
His election is dependent on the will of the Shah. He lives at
Shirauz, pays certain sums annually to the Government, and is sent * *
I would respectfully hint one prominent physical cause, want of rain and rivers,
■consequent aridity over vast extent of country, and separation ot the masses into
small communities in distant isolated valleys. Permit me to suggest, that when your
telegraph for messages is finished, an electric apparatus for the beneficial distribution
of spare rain over Central Asia would be a useful political measure. If they could
only bring rain to their lands, and their women into society, sensible Persians
might have some hope for u poor Iran.”
* I observe in a note, page 140, of the Edinburgh Eeriew for last July, that the
late Sir J. C. Lewis is asserted to have said, that the Orientals “ have never produced
any scientific or literary work worth}'of mention, except the Arabian Nights.
Yet Job and the other books of the Old Testament are generally admitted to have
some merit; the Fables of Pilpai, dressed by iEsop, have some fame. 1 here are
passages in the Sacontala which some critics have held not very inferior to the
Antigone of Sophocles. I will be bound to say, there is not at the present day
a single opera or tragedy in Europe that produces one-half the effect upon the
audience that the tragedy of Hussun Uoossun produces upon a Persian audience.
The reviewer, however, prudently premises that Sir C. Lewis a was not himself
an Oriental scholar.”
When I was at Shirauz the other day, I heard a celebrated singer (a Dervish)
sing and accompany himself with wonderful mastery on his guitar. The songs ot
Persia are almost innumerable. The dervish seems to know an indefinite number.
His practice, I believe, is to sing on till he gets drunk.
I heard also a lad with a fine tenor, almost soprano, voice chant favourite parts
from the Shahnameh of Ferdusi. He commenced every line in a high note, swelled
out towards the middle of the verse, and gradually died away to the close in a
long and plaintive thrill. When he began we were in the middle of a convivial and