Journeys In Persia And Kurdistan ( Vol.Ii).

118 JOURNEYS IN PERSIA LETTEB xx

to the waist, and reaching from the neck to the feet, and
red trousers, tight below the knee, but rarely visible
below the outer dress. Their notion of ornament con-
sists in having a branch or frond tattooed up the throat.

These tribes breed cattle extensively. One camp
possessed over 300 young beasts. The calves are
nourished by their mothers up to two years old. They
have a few white angora goats of great beauty, but the
majority are black and are valued chiefly for their milk
and for their long coarse hair.

A march through fierce heat at a low level brought
us at noon to the village of Imamzada-i-Mamil. The
road, after continuing along the same wooded valley,
which in a happier climate would be called a glen,
emerges on scenery truly "park-like," softly - outlined
hills covered with buff grass, and wooded on their gently-
curved slopes with oak and hawthorn, fringing off into
clumps and single trees. Smooth broad valleys, first of
buff pasture, and then of golden wheat or green maize,
lie among the hills. All is soft and lowland, and was
bathed that day in a dreamy blue heat haze. Not a
mountain rose above the gently-curved hills which were
painted in soft blue on the sky of the distant horizon.
The natural wood ceased. The surroundings underwent
an abrupt change. Is it a change for the better, I
wonder ? Three months and a week have been spent in
zigzagging among some of the loftiest mountains and
deepest valleys of Persia, and they now lie behind, among
the things that were. In fact, Khuramabad, from which
I write, is not only out of the Bakhtiari country, but the
Bakhtiari Lurs are left behind, and we are among the
fierce and undisciplined tribes of the Feili Lurs.

The baggage animals were not dubious, as I am, as to
the advantages of the change. When we reached the
open, Cock o' the Walk threw up his beautiful head,