United States or Taiwan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
We weighed anchor again at nine o'clock, hoping, all being well, to reach Enzelli at daybreak. The sea had now gone down, and things looked more promising. My spirits rose at the thought of being able to land on the morrow.
I embarked at Enzelli on board a small Russian steamer, the Tehran, which had taken the place of one of the usual large vessels employed on the mail-service. The sea was rising as I embarked, and I was lucky in getting on board before the surf on the bar at the mouth of the lagoon became impassable.
The night was fine and clear, but the sea around black as ink, with great foaming white rollers. The decks, a foot deep in snow, were deserted save by Z and the steersman, whose silhouettes stood out black and distinct against the starlit sky as they paced the rickety-looking little bridge flanked by red and green lights. The Enzelli lighthouse was no longer visible.
The same landing difficulties are experienced at Astara and Lenkoran, the places of call between Enzelli and Baku. Should there be any intention of eventually making a railway from the coast to Kasvin and Hamadan, there to meet a line to Baghdad, then it would be the best course in every way to connect Resht with Baku by a railway along the coast, passing through Astara and Lenkoran.
Enzelli is becoming the port of entry, for the North of Persia, of tea from India and China. Till within a very short time most of the tea for Persia, Trans-Caspia, and Russian Turkistan so far as Samarkand, passed up from Bombay by the Persian Gulf ports.
Towards sundown the high tower of the Shah's palace at Enzelli came in sight. At last the neck of this weary journey was broken, and to-morrow, all being well, we should be at Résht. The road is winding, and it was not till past ten o'clock that we rode through the silent, deserted streets to the caravanserai, a filthier lodging than any we had yet occupied.
The Shah on this asked if it were really true that the water of the Caspian was salt, and on being assured that it was, he said the Russians might have the whole of it. We found an improvement at Enzelli in the form of a hotel kept by a Greek, with accommodation good enough to be very welcome.
There is always this risk of wind and weather preventing landing at Enzelli. Proposals have been made to remove the bar sufficiently to allow steamers of eight hundred tons to pass into the lagoon harbour; but the expense of doing this, and keeping up dredgers, would be great too great, it is thought, to allow of any profitable return.
Alalá contains about eight hundred inhabitants. The land surrounding it is thickly cultivated with rice and tobacco. Neither are, however, exported in any quantity, the difficulties of transport to Astará or Enzelli being so great. It is somewhat puzzling to a stranger to get at the names of places on the southern shores of the Caspian.
We embarked in the Admiral Korneiloff, one of the Mercury Company's best boats, on the night of September 17, and arrived at Enzelli on the morning of the 19th. I was amused on the voyage to hear the sailors' version of the story how the Caspian became a Russian sea, on which no armed Persian vessel can sail.
Word Of The Day