Page:The Tarikh-i-Rashidi - Mirza Muhammad Haidar, Dughlát - tr. Edward D. Ross (1895).djvu/95

 64 low ranges and open valleys of the steppes, are changed for gigantic mountains on the one hand, and sandy deserts on the other; the aul of felt tents for the town of brown mud-bricks and close-packed bazars; the grazing grounds and hill-side torrents for cultivated fields and irrigation canals; while, above all, the thriftless, irresponsible nomad is replaced by the cultivator and artisan, with all the elements of stability that their industry confers upon a people. Though the area is large, the culturable and habitable spots in it are, out of all proportion, small. One modern traveller describes it as a huge desert fringed by a few small patches of cultivation. Another tells us that a bird's-eye view of the country would show a huge bare desert, surrounded on three sides by barren mountains, along the bases of which would be seen some vivid green spots, showing out sharp and distinct like streaks of green paint on a sepia picture. At the western end, the cultivation is of greater extent and more continuous than in the eastern half, where the oases are small and separated from each other by stretches of desert, which increase in length as the traveller passes eastward; while the eastern extremity is desert pure and simple. The oases, however, are fertile enough in themselves, for every drop of the water brought down by the streams from the mountains, is drawn off into irrigating canals, and made to reach as far as possible toward the desert, for agricultural purposes.

All except the shifting sands of the central waste, appears to require only water to render the ground fertile; but water is precisely the boon that is withheld. Though the monsoon clouds roll in every summer across the mountain masses on the south, they seldom do more than tantalise the cultivator, who watches them in the hope of rain. Indeed, rain but rarely falls, and a Chinese traveller of ancient days' has recorded the incredulity of the people, when told that water for cultivation fell from heaven, onto the favoured soil of his country, and rendered it independent of melted snow from the mountains. They laughed, and cried: "How can heaven provide enough for all?" Snow may be less of a rarity, but so dry is the atmosphere, that when a fall occurs, it evaporates after a few hours, and leaves the surface of the ground scarcely moistened.

That a land of this nature should support only a small population, and be too poor, as Mirza Haidar tells us, to maintain an army on its own produce, is not surprising. Whether