On the sight of our letters from the governor of Shustar he made us very welcome—conversing through the medium of his secretary, who knows Arabic. Carpets were brought, and tea made—the most delicious draught we ever tasted in our lives—flavoured with orange and some acid fruit. The gallop has cured Wilfrid, and he says he shall not be ill again.
Our caravan having arrived, we have moved outside the town, for the ferraz-bashi’s house is not big enough to hold us all, and are encamped on a little mound overlooking the gardens which skirt Ram Hormuz. I wish I could describe the beauty of this place. Round us lie a few acres of green wheat, in which quails and francolins are calling, and through which a little stream of running water winds. Close by, on another mound, stands a beautiful little kubbr, the tomb of some saint, and on either side gardens half run wild, a delicious tangle of pomegranate, fig, and vine, with here and there lemon and peach, and groups of palm. The pomegranates now are in full flower, and so are the roses, and every thicket is alive with nightingales. It is nearly sunset, and groups of blue-gowned Persians are coming across the fields from the town, to wash and say their prayers at the stream and the kubbr. The town itself is half hidden in the gardens, but shows picturesquely through, backed by a range of crimson hills, scored and lined with blue shadows. We have been following the edge of these hills all the way from Shustar. They are the same which are supposed to hold the Shirazi robbers our Arab escort feared so much.
The position of the Arabs here is a miserable one. At war with these Shirazi, and pillaged by the Government which does nothing to protect them, they still cling to their little bits of cultivation wherever there is water near the hills. They are half the year nomadic, going south and west with the flocks, but in the spring return to the hills, plough up a few acres, and gather in a crop if possible before the tax-gatherer has found them out. The Persian Government is weak, and the garrison of Ram Hormuz is generally only sufficient for its duty of holding the town, but every now and then a reinforcement arrives from Ahwas or Fellahieh and then a raid is made under pretext of a collection of arrears, and horses and cattle are driven off in payment. This seems to be the plan throughout the province. We asked Abeyeh and the Khamis Sheykh who came with him to-day to our camp, why they put themselves into this government trap by coming to the hills, when they might remain unmolested in the plain, or go where they would. “It is the soil,” they exclaimed, “the soil which is so rich. Where should we find another like it?” Indeed, the whole of this side of Persia seems meant to be a garden. Unlike the plains of Bagdad, which never can have been cultivated except with irrigation, the land here grows crops as in Europe, watered by the rain from heaven. The range of Bactiari hills by attracting clouds gives it this rare advantage.