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Iran - 2002

Iran - 2002

Jacek Pałkiewicz
2006-06-25 13:14:43

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in 1887 and 1888, two young Indian officers, Lieutenant R. E. Galindo and Lieutenant H. B. Vaughan, travelling, the former from Khiir to Damgban, the latter from Anarek to Semnan, alighted at intervening points upon the true Dasht-i-Kavir. The experiences of each were somewhat different. Lieutenant Galindo speaks of perfectly level ground, at first principally black mud, with isolated patches of white salt, and slimy pools of green water. Gradually the salt increases till it becomes a hard, almost unbroken, white crust, still with the green pools standing on it, and looking something like the little pools left by the sea in the hollows of a rocky coast at low water. It is no exaggeration to say that the whole of this track (about twenty-six miles) is marked out by carcasses of camels, averaging one for every 200 yards, in various stages of pickle.

Elsewhere, there was little or no saline efflorescence, but it appeared as if very liquid black mud had been suddenly arrested and hardened, while in a state of violent ebullition or effervescence. The ground is thickly pitted and honeycombed with round holes, from eight to twelve inches in diameter, and generally about the same depth, though some go down two or three feet. Between these are rounded nodules or ridges of mud, some of which are solid, but some are merely bubbles or blisters of earth, with a thin crust covering a treacherous bole. On the path a horse has to move with slow circumspection, stepping from knob to knob, or he would soon be lamed. Off the beaten track, of course, it is simply impassable.
Lieutenant Vaughan, more to the west, wrote as follows:- 'As we quitted the defile, a sudden turn in the road presented to our astonished gaze what at first sight looked like a vast frozen sea, stretching away to the right as far as the eye could reach in one vast glistening expanse. A more careful examination proved it to be nothing more than salt formed into one immense sheet of dazzling brilliancy, ...