Annotated Copy of Persia and the Persian Question by George Curzon, with Inserted Papers [‎126r] (258/1814)

FROM KUCHAN TO KELAT-I-NAD 1 RI
115
caused excruciating scrunches to the springs of the light victoria.
For the first ten miles the country, though at this season destitute
of verdure, was richly cultivated, every square yard being turned
by the plough. Wrapped up in a shroud of dust, I could scarcely
see a yard in front. At intervals on either side of the plain
occurred small mud villages, clinging to the shade of tiny clumps
of trees, which owed their existence to some stray watercourse or
to a happily unchoked leaned} Of these villages we passed in
1 I shall have occasion so frequently to speak of Jumats, and they constitute
so striking and almost invariable a feature of the Persian landscape, that, for the
benefit of those who have not seen them, I will describe what they are. A kanat
(identical with the Beluch and Afghan kariz) is a subterranean gallery or aqueduct
conducting the water from its parent springs in hill or mountain to the village
where it is required either to promote cultivation or to sustain life. The process
of construction is as follows. Experimental shafts are first sunk until a spring is
tapped in the higher ground. Then the labourer begins at the other end, where the
water is required upon the surface, or at intervening points, and digs a trench or
cutting, on a very slightly inclined plane, in the direction of the spring. As he
goes further and gets deeper underground, circular pits or shafts are opened from
above, at distances of twenty yards or more, by which the excavated soil is drawn
up to the surface and heaped round the mouth of the shaft. In time the subter
ranean tunnel reaches the spring, and the water flows down the nicely calculated
slope to its destination. The shafts are subsequently used to keep the gallery
clear and free from obstruction. A village with any extent of cultivable soil is
therefore, as a rule, the apex from which radiate a number of kanat lines, often
several miles in length, to the nearest mountain, the long succession of 'shafts
resembling an array of portentous mole-hills thrown up one after the other across
the plain. The water-way, however, is very easily blocked or choked or in other
ways impaired, whereupon the whole labour is repeated ab initio, two parallel
hanat lines being often encountered within a few yards of each other, the earlier
of which has been totally abandoned. It will easily be understood how dangerous
are the open shafts of the latter. The debris round their summits gets washed in
by the rain, so that nothing remains to mark the mouth of the pit; and many are
the animals that have found a premature death by falling down. Their skeletons
can sometimes be seen wedged half-way down the shafts. Riders and their
horses have had the most extraordinary escapes, and the case is well known at
Teheran of a gentleman who, while out hawking, suddenly disappeared from view,
having dropped down a disused shaft, but was hauled up along with his horse
without any damage to either. The hanat shafts are the favourite abode of blue-
rock pigeons, who, if the hands be clapped at one opening, will dart out of the
next, providing shots that would puzzle even the professors of Hurlingham, In
the account of his Persian travels, given by one of the Venetian Ambassadors
Signor Josafa Barbaro, over 400 years ago, occurs an interesting passage about
the digging of TianaU, which was thus rendered into English in a quaint transla
tion of the sixteenth century : ‘ Neere to the ryver they make a pitt like unto a
well, from whense they folowe, diggeng by lyvells towardes the place they meane
to bringe it to ; so that it may evermore distende chanell wise; which chanell is
deeper than the botome of the foresaid pytt, and whan they have digged about
i 2