'Lord Curzon's Notes on Persia' [‎387r] (774/1386)

( 6 )
1st March progress was made as far as a garden called Husainabad.
Should this be identified with the spot so named in St. John’s map, it
would seem to have been placed too far to the westward; and the
seventh march to Muhammadabad, passing Sari Yezd at a short distance
on the right, tends to confirm this impression. These two places were
visited by me in the winter of 1865 and 1870, when leaving the city of
Yezd for Kerman, so that we are no longer in an unexplored region.
Yezd itself was the short eighth march of Lieut. Vaughan from Robat.
As that officer remarks, this town is already well known, but although
on that account his description of it is but brief, a passage or two may
be found appropriate :—
“It is a fine city containing a population of between sixty and
seventy thousand souls, and is the capital of the district of the same
name. There are several fire-temples in the place, though mostly con
cealed from view. A curious feature here is the great number of wind
towers; these are high square erections, rather top-heavy, and resembling
an old fashioned kitchen clock with the face knocked out, through which
the wind pours down into the lower rooms of the houses, and keeps them
cool during the summer months, when the heat is so great that many of
the people live altogether in subterranean apartments. Ochers who can
afford to leave their business retire to their summer houses on the Shir
Kuh, and there pass the summer. The bazars, which are roofed in, are
very extensive and well stocked. There is a very fine old mosque
called the ‘Juma Masjid’ in the city, whose lofty minarets are visible
for many a mile across the dreary expanse by which the place is sur
rounded. Water is brought by numerous underground passages along
which it flows from the Shir Kuh, at a depth of many feet below the
surface. As regards trade, the place does a considerable amount;
exporting, besides other products, opium, cotton, and wool. The imports
consist of almost every kind of goods consumed in Persia, amongst which
are large quantities of sugar and tea. A great portion of this trade
is in the hands of the Parss. The port of Yezd is of course Bandai-
Abbas, Lingah serving in this respect but little, owing to the badness
of the roads and their insecurity when passing through the nomad
haunts of Lar.”
Lieut. Vaughan’s reckoning raises the figure for the total population
of Yezd by 25,000 above my own and that of the Statesman’s Year
Book. These last may have been based upon inaccurate information,
and partly affected by immigration and natural increase; but when he
quotes the latest census for Gabrs or Parsis at above 6700, I cannot but
regard it as an over-estimate. The number of Jews, given as 900, is
much in accordance with the information gathered on my first visit to
the city twenty-four years ago. As for the Hindu merchants, of whom
I counted seventeen in 1865, and five in 1871, it is not unlikely, since
nothing is now reported of them, that they have disappeared altogether.
I propose, later on, to say a few words on the geographical results
of the present exploration, in connection with the results of older
explorers—mainly those obtained from the surveys of the late Sir Charles
Macgregor. I shall therefore confine myself, at the present, to recalling
one of the many routes of that able, zealous, and indefatigable officer,
the record of which may well be reconsidered in reviewing any newly
explored approach to Yezd from the south. It is one which he followed
in the spring of 1875 when proceeding to that city from Dehbid, on the
Ispahan-Shiraz post road, and which brought him to his destination
through Ubarkuh and Taft, and over the Aliabad Pass of 8000 feet high.
The more recent traveller must have made his entry by the same gate
and through the same gardens, villages, and cultivation ; though ho
may not have been inflicted with the same ceremonious istikbal which
was accorded to, and has been graphically described by, Macgregor. On
this division of his work I shall now only add that had he done no more
than discover the town of Bastak, with its population of some 5000 and
district of 15,000 souls—which we hear of on his seventh march from
Lingah—Lieut. Vaughan would, in a geographical sense, have amply
justified the cost and trouble of his journey.