‘GAZETTEER OF PERSIA VOL. I Comprising the Provinces of ASTARÁBÁD, SHÁHRUD-BÚSTAN, KHÚRÁSÁN, AND SÍSTÁN’ [‎227v] (461/722)

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and the potato, which has lately been introduced, thrive remarkably
well. Poppies, from which an excellent opium is extracted, senna, rhubarb,
saffron, and asafcetida, are produced in many parts of the kingdom."
Famine of 1871 in Persia.
The rise and progress of the recent famine in Persia were briefly as fol
lows. . .
From the winter of 1863-64, the rams, with a single exception, 1865-66,
had been regularly below the average. Lakes, springs, and kanats, all over
the country^ got lower and lower every summer. The crops, nevertheless,
had been generally good and abundant. During the sixth winter, that of
1869-70, hardly any snow or rain fell in the valleys. In the south particu
larly the scanty showers produced little or no grass in the lower plains,
frequented as cold-weather quarters by the nomads, who form half the popu
lation of Pars. The consequence was the loss of the majority of the flocks
and herds, upon which they depend for subsistence and for the carriage of
their families and property in their half-yearly migrations, ihe camels and
goats, hardier animals, survived; and the richer tribes, who alone possess
the former, were thus able to get up to the elevated mountain plateau, where
snow had fallen, though to a less depth than usual. The poorer families,—
owners perhaps of a few sheep and goats, with a mare or cow, on which
their cooking-pots and scanty tent are packed while travelling,—saw their
only means of transport to better pastures perish before their eyes; and
either lay down and died, or made their way to the towns and villages,
prolonging their miserable existence with roots and herbs, or with the
carcasses of the dead animals, that were unusually numerous on the great
highways.
Towards the end of 1870, I marched down the road to Bushahr from
Shiraz with Major Champain, Director-in-Chief of the Anglo-Persian Tele
graph Department, of which I was then officiating Director. At every
halting-place crowds of famished, half-naked men and boys (the women and
children were nearly all dead) thronged around our camp, too weak to beg,
but hoping, yet hardly expecting, succour from the bounty of the infidels.
All that we could do was to give them a meal of rice for the day; and this
we had no difficulty in procuring from the villagers at moderate prices, show
ing that there was no lack of food in the country. On my return, partly to
avoid these terrible scenes and the contagion of disease,—for typhus, cholera,
and dysentery were adding their ravages to those of hunger,—and partly for
surveying purposes, I took the unfrequented eastern road to Shiraz. Even
here my servants buried three corpses on one day’s march of 35 miles,
during which we did not meet a living soul ; and I found disease, induced
by bad and insufficient food, causing great mortality among the wealthier
tribes of Iliat, who had lost nearly all their horses, sheep, and cattle.
During this first season of distress, the villages suffered comparatively
little ; though a few places in the intermediate valleys, from two to four
thousand feet in altitude, notably the district of Kazrun, were nearly deserted
on account of the failure of water in the kanats. In the plains near the
coast, where artificial irrigation is not used, the corn-crops had totally failed;
but the date harvest having been unusually plentiful, there was no lack of
food.
In Isfahan, Yazd, and Mashhad prices were very high through this
first winter; and though the peasants generally had enough, the artizans and