"بلاد فارس والشأن الفارسي بقلم جورج ناثانييل كرزون، عضو البرلمان." [‎٥‎٠‎٩] (٧٤٨/٦٠٠)

EE VENUE, RESOURCES, AND MANUFACTURES 509
hundred mules, the average price of which is from 12L to 20L in
the native market, although, if it be true, as I have heard, that
each animal so purchased costs the Indian Government 50Z. by the
time that it is delivered at Lahore, I can scarcely describe the
process as an economical one, and cannot help wondering why
rearing establishments are not instituted on a larger scale in India
itself. In the Bakhtiari country the breeding of mules is an
object of great care and solicitude. Donkey stallions and mares,
are kept for this exclusive purpose, the former being neither used
as beasts of burden nor allowed to mix with their own species.
Of the powerful one-humped camel of Khorasan, I have spoken
in my chapter on that province. He will not travel so quickly or
so far as a horse or a mule, but he will carry double the
burden, viz., 600 lbs., and proceed at the rate of twenty
miles a day. The ordinary and inferior camel, which constitutes
the bulk of most caravans, will carry 400 lbs. and march fifteen
miles per diem.
The southern shores of the Caspian and the rivers there flow
ing into the sea are richly stocked with fish, principally sturgeon
and sterlet, the export of which, both in dried state and in
Fisheries cav i arj i n the hands of a Eussian, who pays a very
large annual price for the monopoly, and is said to make a hand
some profit from his speculation. Polak, some years ago, estimated
the annual production of caviar in the Caspian fisheries as 687
' tons, at the rate of 1,000 fish to a ton.
Skins and hides are exported in large quantities to Baghdad
and Russia from Khorasan, Isfahan, Shiraz, and Hamadan. At
Shiraz is produced a native equivalent to the curled
Bokharan lambskin of Kara Kul, near the Oxus, denomi
nated in Europe Astrakhan. The quality is not so fine as the
Central Asian skin, but it is very extensively used in the manu
facture of the Persian holah, or conical headdress. Hamadan is the
scene of the principal tanneries and leather factories of Persia, and
there the material known in Europe as Russian leather is said to
have been originally, prepared.
An increasing amount of sheeps' wool aud of goats' hair is now
being exported from Persia. The chief areas of production are
Khorasan, Ears and Laristan, Azerbaijan, Kermanshah and
Kurdistan. Of these the Khorasan flocks, especially those
of Turbat-i-Haideri, and of the nomad tribes on the Perso-Afghan