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 BAKHTIAri — BALAGHAT 81 following year purchased the estate of Sandford Orleigh, on the tops of the hills are many romantic ruins of old in South Devon, where he made his home for the rest of castles. his life. He published his narrative of the Central Baku, a Bussian government of Transcaucasia, African expedition, under the title of Ismdilia, in 1874. Cyprus as I saw it in 1879, was the result of a visit to bounded by the Caspian Sea from 41° 50' to 38° 30' N. that island. With the exception of winters spent in Egypt lat. in the E., and the Bussian provinces of Daghestan and India, Baker passed the rest of his life in compara- and Elisabethpol and Persia in the W. and S. It covers tive seclusion at Sandford Orleigh. He kept up an part of the plains on the north-east slope of the Caucasus exhaustive and vigorous correspondence with men of all (Kuba plain); the south - east extremity of the main shades of opinion upon Egyptian affairs. Next to these, Caucasus range, from Shah-dagh and Bazardyuz to the ■questions of maritime defence and strategy chiefly attracted Caspian, where it ends in the Apsheron peninsula ; the low him in his later years. He died at Sandford Orleigh on plains and steppes of the lower Kura ■ and finally a narrow belt, of the slopes of the Anti-Caucasus plateaus, steeply 30th December 1893. (r. f. s ^ falling about Lenkoran to the Caspian Sea, where the Bakhtiari, one of the great nomad tribes of gulf of.Kyzyl-agach, protected by a peninsula of the same Persia, whose camping grounds are in the hilly district name, is formed. The province is watered by the lower known as the Bakhtidri province. This province extends Kura and by a number of small rivers. from Chahar Mahdl (west of Isfahan) in the E., to near The northern part, on both slopes of the Caucasus, is very fertile Shushtar in the W., and separated from Luristdn in the and well irrigated, with fine forests and rich fields (partly rice) and Shemakha is renowned for silkworm culture. The N. by the Dizful river (Ab i Diz), and in the S. touches gardens. plains on the Kura are also fertile, but require irrigation, especially Behbahdn and Bam Hormuz. The Bakhtidri are divided for the cotton-tree plantations. The Mugah and Shirvan steppes into the two great divisions Haft-lang and Chahar-lang, are richly covered with grass from October to March. The fisheries and a number of branches and clans, and were known at the mouth of the Kura (Bozhiy Promysel) are the richest in The Lenkoran district has a very warm climate (year until the. 15th century as the “Great Lurs,” the “Little Russia. Falir. ; January, 38°; July, 79°), and has a large rainfall Lurs being the tribes settled in the district now known 58 (47-6 in.), i.e., five times as much as Baku. Rice-fields and rich as Luristdn, with Khorremabad as capital. According to gardens are characteristic of the district. The Apsheron peninsula popular tradition the Lurs originally came from Syria in is dry and nearly devoid of vegetation, but it contains very rich the 10th century, but it is now held that they were in naphtha wells, the richest of which are 8 miles E.N.E. and 3 miles S.W. of Baku. The extraction of naphtha, which attained only Persia long, perhaps fifteen centuries, before. They speak 5500 tons in 1863, has grown rapidly, reaching 7,380,000 tons in the Lur language, a Persian dialect. The Bakhtidri 1898. The wells, opened by boring 500 to 680 feet deep, throw number about 38,000 or 40,000 families, under 200,000 out enormous quantities of naphtha mixed with sea-water (up to souls, while the area of the district occupied by them is 10,000 tons a day); 765,000 tons of refined paraffin oil were obtained in the same year, and 788,000 exported abroad. It is about 25,000 square miles. About fifty or sixty years ago expoited in cistern-ships and railway carriages. The vine tree they could put 20,000 well-equipped horsemen into the is widely grown, as also the mulberry tree for silkworm rearinofield, but in consequence of misrule and long-lasting feuds especially in the district of Shemakha. Spirit is obtained in large between the different branches, which the Government quantities. Permanent population (1897), 789,659 ; 814,789 according to the Caucasus census of 1896. Of the 712,703 inhabitants often fostered, or even instigated, the district has become inscribed m 1891, only 42,430 were Russians, 376,520 were Tatars, poor, and it would now be difficult to find 4000 horsemen. 118,165 Tates, 55,460.Armenians, 50,510Talyshins, 41,784 Kyurins’ The province is under the governor-general of Arabistan, and so on. It is divided into six districts, the chief towns of and pays a yearly tribute of about £5000. The chiefs of which areBaku,, capital of the province (112,253 inhabitants (2247 in 1896); Saliany, chief town of Jevat the Bakhtidri, in 1897, having obtained the Shah’s per- in 1897); Geok-chai ^strict (iO,168); Kuba (15,846); Lenkoran (8768); Shemakha mission for improving the road between Shushtar, or (20,008). Ahvdz, and Isfahan, an iron suspension bridge with a span Baku, capital of the above province, on the S. coast of 120 feet was erected over the Karun river at Gudar i Apsheron peninsula, 381 miles by rail E.S.E. of Baliitek; another, with a span of 70 feet, over the Bdzuft °f river at Pul i Amdrat; and a stone bridge over the Karun Tiflis, 40°. 21' N. and 49° 50' E., is now connected by a at Do-pu-ldn. A great part of the traffic from the Persian railway with the seaport of Petrovsk, and consequently Gulf, to Isfahan will probably now be diverted from the with the Bussian railway system via Vladikavkaz. No Bushire-Shiraz-Isfahan road to the Ahvaz-Bakhtidri-Isfahan other town, of Bussia has developed as rapidly as Baku, its population having grown from 13,381 in 1860 to one. For accounts of the Bakhtiari and their country the follow- 112,253 in 1897. Baku has in its southern part a stone quay, 1^ mile lorn' ing works, may be consulted with advantage :—Mrs Bishop. Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan. London, 1893.—C. de the governor’s house, the old garden of the khans, and many Bode. Travels in Luristan. London, 1841.—Hon. G. N. non shops. Numbers of well-paved streets with good European Lurzon. Persia and the Persian Question, vol. ii. 283-303. buddmgs spread inwards, while the Asiatic town, with narrow ondon, 1892. Sir H. Layard. Early Adventures in Persia. winding streets, is built in terraces on the slope of a hill. Here are the ruins of a once beautiful palace of the khans built in the London, 1894. H _s ) 15th century, the mosque of the shahs built in 1078, and, by the Bakony, a large chain of mountains in south-west sea, the “tower of the girls,” now transformed into a lighthouse. Hungary, E. of the Alps, in the counties of Veszprem, The ‘ ‘ black town, with its naphtha wells and works, lies to the north. The climate of Baku is extreme, the average temperature Zala, and Fejer. It extends some 68 miles from south- being: year, 58 Fahr. ; January, 38°; July, 80°; yearly rainfall, west to north-east, and 18 to 31 miles from north-west to 9 4 inches. . A north-north-west wind of exceptional force blows south-east. The highest peak is Koroshegy (2339 feet). occasionally in winter. Owing to its good harbour and fortunate On the shores of Lake Balaton the range has many position, Baku is also the chief depot for all sorts of goods coming from Persia and Transcaucasia—raw cotton, rice, silk, wine, fish, beautiful basaltic cones, and its other peaks are also dried fruit, and timber—as also for Russian manufactured goods. mostly coniform or dome-shaped, being richly covered The port is visited yearly by 3550 steamers and about 2200 sailing with beech-woods. Formerly the Bakony was a wild vessels. orest, full of game, but its wild character has disappeared. Balagfhat ( = above the ghats or passes, the highOnly the stag, deer, and badger are now found in any lands), a district of British India in the Nagpur division of numbers. Glass-works, porcelain manufactories, forges, the Central Provinces. The administrative headquarters and sawmills have been built on its wooded slopes, are at the town of Burha. The district contains an area the soil produces grapes yielding excellent wine, and of 3139 square miles. The population in 1891 was S. II. — 11