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Iran - 2002
Iran - 2002
Jacek Pałkiewicz2006-06-25 13:14:43
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The Kavir salt desert
Yazd and Kerman both stand, as has been seen, on the outskirts of a desert, and north of both, for league upon league, extends the appalling waste that has here stamped upon deserts Persia the imprint of an eternal desolation. From the haunts of busy life and commerce I turn, therefore, to the contemplation of a Sahara as funereal and more unique than any that Tartary or Africa call display.
ln existing works upon Persia there will be found hesitating, and often conflicting, accounts about both the extent, the ramifications, and the limits of the main Persian desert or deserts, arising from the scant and often untrustworthy information upon which those descriptions have been based. The more reliable intelligence that has lately been procured enables us to formulate a more accurate conception. There are, practically speaking, two great deserts, covering a combined length, from north-west to south-east, of over 500 miles, but separated from each other, between the thirty-second and thirty-fourth parallels of latitude, by a belt of hilly country, along which runs one of the main caravan tracks from the centre to the north-east. Of these deserts, the more northerly, extending from 33' to 36' north latitude, and from 52' to 57' east longitude, is that generally known as the Great Salt Desert, or Dasht-i-Kavir. The second or southerly, extending from 29' to "0'2' north latitude, and from 57' to 60' east longitude, is that described on the maps as the Dasht-i-Lut. Both are salt, in so far as nemeksar, or saline swamp, is found in the depressions of each, which average about 1,000 feet above the sea ; but the far greater proportion of kavir in the northern desert and the almost complete absence of vegetation have procured for it the unenviable monopoly of the name.
By some the name Dasht-i-Kavir has been simply translated Great Desert, kavir being presumed
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