means of passage to the left bank, where stand the village and the chāpārkhana. After unloading and conveying our kit to the upper story (known in Persian as the khilwat or private apartment) of the sarai, we settled down in the front verandah facing the river and village, and breakfasted on eggs and bread, mast (curds) and jam. The eggs (raw), beaten up with water and sugar, make a refreshing and nutritious drink. Fortunately, one can always get fresh eggs in Persia. Fresh milk, again, is difficult to procure. Mast is generally obtainable, and here we got it of very fair quality, fresh and less sour than usual. Mixing jam with it, we found it very palatable. When really well prepared and pure, as we got it later in Isfahan, and eaten with sweet preserved fruits, it is excellent. The Persians themselves, I am told, eat it sweetened with shira, i.e. treacle made from inferior or refuse grapes. Persians thoroughly utilise their grapes, eating and making wine from the best kinds, spirits (ie عرق = arrack) from the skins already pressed for wine, and treacle from those fit neither for eating nor for wine." 1 And now to describe this remarkable village. The engraving in Malcolm's Persia is (considering that the original must be at least 110 years old 2), a tolerably accurate representation of the river-face of the village. It gives, however, a false impression in that the architecture looks very superior to the reality, that the small balconies of boughs, supported by beams protruding a few feet from the walls, are not shown, and that there is no trace of the repulsive use to which these balconies are put.

The student of Persian life and manners should examine the illusstrations of Yezdikhāst given by Curzon and Bradley-Birt, and then read the following passage from Dupré (Voyage en Perse, 1807-9): "On pénètre par un petit pont en planches dans ce bourg, qui offre l'aspect le plus dégoûtant, à cause des immondices qui salissent les murs des maisons." To English eyes this picture drawn in French is less repellent than one painted in blunt English. The copy of "Dupré from which I quote is the one formerly in the Beckford and Hamilton libraries with William Beckford's notes.

"

It is a remarkable thing that travellers who have visited and carefully described this place are markedly at a variance in regard to the compass-bearings of the entrance to it. Binning puts it on the "north-east" side, and Bradley-Birt says that the sole entrance is by a narrow foot-bridge which connects the village with the "northern" bank. Morier writes: "To the east, over a rude drawbridge, is the entrance to the town." Buckingham says, "The only passage into the town was at the south-west end," and this last statement is confirmed by Lord Curzon (Persia, vol. ii. p. 67), who, as it would seem, took particular note of the compass-hearings of the entrance. The statement in my own diary is, "The entrance is from the south by a drawbridge over the moat"; but I took no exact bearing. I doubtless judged roughly by the sun. I do not propose to devote time to the reconciliation of these conflicting statements. I accept south-west as approximately correct.

All writers remark upon the deception which the position of the village exercises upon the approaching traveller, who, only when he is close to it, finds himself upon the edge of a cliff 80 feet high, with a river-bed 400 yards broad below him, and in the centre of the river-bed a rocky islet with almost sheer cliffs, on the top of which is perched a village, the walls of which rise flush with the edge of the precipices which form their foundation. I have myself found interest in comparing the description (too lengthy to quote here) given by Chardin of Yezdikhāst, and his large picture of it with those of more recent travellers. He describes it as "Château et Bourg"; the Château on the rock, the Bourg at its foot. He describes its splendid fertility and the copious waters of the river, "lorsque les neiges fondent," and having borne testimony to the excellence of the caravansary in which he was lodged, he pays a similar compliment to the local boulanger. "On mange dans ce Bourg-là le meilleur pain de toute la Perse, où il passe aussi en Proverbe parmi les gens de bon goût. Ils disent que pour faire chère entière, il faut avoir Pain de Yezdecast, Vin de Chiras (Shiraz) et Femme de Yezd." A little reflection upon the material which Georgia and Circassia furnish to the slave markets and harems of Turkey and Persia induces him to add, "Le Proverbe doit être ancien." After spending fifteen or sixteen years in Oriental travel, Chardin, the son of a Huguenot jeweller, found it wiser, when he returned in 1681 to Europe, to settle in London. It is true that the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes was not proclaimed until 1685, but of the 400,000 good subjects whom Louis XIV. lost by that act of folly, many, Chardin's family included, had, doubtless, taken time by the forelock. Like many other Huguenots, he found home and fortune in England. Report has it that, ten days after his disembarkation in April 1681 in London, he was knighted by Charles II. and married (to a refugee Huguenot lady) on one and the same day. By 1686 he had brought out the first instalment of his travels, and was then appointed to the honourable and onerous post of "ministre plénipotentiaire du roi d'Angleterre auprès des États de Hollande, et agent de la compagnie anglaise des Indes orientales auprès des mêmes États." The descendants of this distinguished traveller and diplomatist exist to-day in England, as the Hon. Sec. of the Huguenot Society has kindly informed

me.

The testimony of later travellers, to wit Buckingham and BradleyBirt, shows that this neighbourhood had, since the days of Chardin, become the marauding ground of the Bakhtiaris. The caravansarais in the vicinity were in consequence strongly walled and capable of defence. Buckingham finds the sarai full of Persian soldiers, who promptly suspect him of being either a Bakhtiari spy or a bandit pure and simple. If Mr. Buckingham was attired in the gorgeous "costume worn in his travels," which illuminates the frontispiece to his book, the instinct of the Persian soldier, as rapacious, doubtless, one hundred years ago as to-day, would have been not to immolate but to "fleece" him. Incidentally I may mention, for the enlightenment of those who do not know Persia and the Persians, that the inhabitants of Yezdikhāst, behind their raised drawbridge, enjoy such immunity from exorbitant taxation and official and military rapacity that travellers dwell not upon the gratitude, but upon the "insolence" which their position of security inspires. Human nature all over, and by no means unpardonable! Secure as seems its site, where the Fars and Irāk frontiers meet, it has run the usual gauntlet of fortune. It was clearly in Chardin's day a more important place than it is now. When the Afghans overran Persia, about 1725, Yezdikhāst was taken by assault and the inhabitants put to

the sword. When, upon the death of the humane Prince Karim Khan Zend in 1779, Aga Muhammad Khan Kājār fled to Māzanderān,1 and Ali Murad Khan Zend proclaimed his independence, that Hun-hearted ruffian Zakki Khan, came from Shiraz to Yezdikhāst, and there demeaned himself with such cold-blooded brutality, that his own followers cut by night the ropes of his tent, and the populace of the town rushed in and finished him off as he lay struggling in the heavy folds of the canvas. These unsightly walls have indeed seen their tragedies.

Several of the many travellers who have visited and written about Yezdikhāst, mention, I notice, that there is said to be a direct route from that village to the well-known town of Yezd, which is an important centre of trade, and also the chief home of the Guebres, the name by which the Persians who still adhere to the Zoroastrian religion are known to us. The bee-line from Yezdikhāst to Yezd measures about 130 miles, and traverses for at least 70 miles an apparently unsurveyed tract of desert and salt-marsh. Therefore, I conclude that for a small unencumbered party, mounted on good camels or horses, the march is perfectly feasible. The fact, however, remains that no European has ever taken this route and left on record that he has done so. Curzon (Persia, vol. ii. pp. 265-6), gives a complete list of European travellers to and from Yezd. The Travels of Dupré, Khanikoff, M'Gregor, are before me, but to those of Colonel Trézel and Herr Petermann I have not here access. It is a remark by M'Gregor (Khorassan, vol. i. p. 66) that has tempted me to make this digression, and the subject appears to me so interesting that I offer no excuse for making it. These are M'Gregor's words: - " I regret very much that when I was at Taft I had not read M. Khanikoff's Mémoire sur la Partie Méridionale de l'Asie Centrale, or I might have explored the famous cavern of Taft, which he mentions as containing very rich lead mines and traces of turquoise ; and my attention was certainly not called to this cavern." I have myself italicised this remark of M'Gregor; for it evidently is intended to emphasise the fact that he stopped twelve or fifteen hours at Taft and never heard a word about it. Similarly in 1808 Dupré, who was on the staff of General Gardaune, Napoleon's envoy to the Shah of Persia, visits Taft, devotes a page to its interests and industries, but never alludes to the cave. The one seeming confirmation that we have is to be found in Curzon's Persia (vol. i. p. 264), where we learn that Colonel the Hon. George Napier (about 1874) and Mr. (now Sir) Arthur Herbert (1886) also testified that "traces of turquoise" were to be found at Taft. With this preamble I give a résumé of that which M. Khanikoff has left on record. As a place that has been a great centre alike of Zoroastrianism and Sufi-ism, produces some of the finest of Persian felts, and is the hill-station of Yezd, it has claim to attention; but we are here concerned with its minerals, its lead, turquoise, lapis-lazuli and silver. Khanikoff writes :- "Je terminerai cette digression par quelques mots sur la fameuse caverne de Taft, connue en Perse comme une des plus riches mines de plomb. M. Gæbel [Khanikoff's geologist] a visité cette localité curieuse, et il y a découvert des gisements de turquoises. À Taft, on m'a montré un petit ouvrage persan, intitulé Toouhidi 2 mufassal, où il est rapporté que pendant la domination des Mongols un vizir du Khakan, amateur de minéralogie, chargea un homme connu par sa véracité de visiter cette caverne." This passage might lead us to suppose that Gœbel saw the cavern. Khanikoff only says that he visited the "localité." The Mongol rule in Persia extended over the thirteenth

1 Ten miles south-west of Yezd, and situated amid hills. Professor E. G. Browne of Cambridge also informs me that he visited Taft and heard nothing of the cave. 2 This ungainly effort at transliteration perhaps represents the Arabic word Tauhid which means "unity."

(توحيد )

and fourteenth centuries A.D. As to the "Khakan," Yule's Marco Polo (2nd edition, vol. i. p. 9, note) states specifically that that was "the peculiar title of the supreme sovereign of the Mongols, and, if not borne by Chinghiz, was certainly assumed by his son Okkodai or Ogdai." By this we fix the date of this romantic and very interesting tale of exploration as lying between, say, 1250 and 1400 A.D. After long wanderings the two explorers (a third man was left at the entrance with strict orders not to quit his post before nightfall the exploration clearly began in the morning) "entrèrent dans une grotte où ils aperçurent des squelettes humains et quelques lambeaux de vêtements à demi pourris, tristes dépouilles de quelques-uns de leurs hardis prédécesseurs qui y avaient perdu la vie. Bientôt après l'un des explorateurs, celui qui portait la torche allumée, fit une chute et la torche s'éteignit." Thus left in darkness they still cautiously, à tâtons, continue their advance, and finally reach a spot where a faint glimmer of light through a lateral fissure enabled them to see what lay before them. A huge mass, detached from the vault blocked their further progress. They realised that "leur montre qu'ils n'avaient pas eu le loisir de consulter jusque-là leur indiquait qu'il était une heure de la nuit, et qu'ainsi ils avaient marché pendant plus de douze heures." We will not discuss here the state of the art of watch-making among the Mongols in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries of our era. It may be that Sir Henry Howorth sheds light upon this topic; but how the two explorers could see the time by their watch at one o'clock of the night, unless that watch were a luminous one, is a mystery. Yule admits that Marco Polo found the clepsydra in use in the Far East, but of the portable and luminous watch there is no trace. Khanikoff concludes with these words, "Les spécimens de roches qu'ils apportèrent avec eux permirent d'établir que les cavernes qu'ils avaient visitées contenaient des gisements de lapis lazuli et du minerai d'argent." M'Gregor and Khanikoff alike earnestly hope that some future traveller will clear up the doubtful point of the existence of this cavern. When Brigadier-General Sir Percy Sykes, one of our greatest authorities on Iran and all things Iranian, and other British officers are located in Eastern Persia, and, being practically masters of the situation and likely to remain so for some years to come, have a free hand for exploration and surveying, the present would seem to be a most favourable opportunity for ascertaining whether or not Taft conceals in its vicinity a cave worthy to rival the "Mammoth Cave" of Kentucky. I make this suggestion, not forgetting that the first call upon the energies of all these officers is that of duty to our Empire and defeat to the Drang nach Osten. But there are moments of relaxation.

Having been lured by this cavern mystery to within 10 miles of Yezd, the principal home, as I have said, of the Guebres1 of to-day, I wish

,(گبر)