The Road Via Tarum And Sirjan Is Very Seldom Taken By
Travellers Intending To Go To Kerman; It Is Only Frequented By The
Caravans Going Between Bender 'Abbas And Bahramabad, Three Stages West Of
Kerman.
Hot springs, 'curing itch,' I noticed at two places on the
Urzu-Baft road.
There were some near Qal'ah Asgber and others near Dashtab;
they were frequented by people suffering from skin-diseases, and were
highly sulphureous; the water of those near Dashtab turned a silver ring
black after two hours' immersion. Another reason of my advocating the Urzu
road is that the bitter bread spoken of by Marco Polo is only found on it,
viz. at Baft and in Bardshir. In Sirjan, to the west, and on the roads to
the east, the bread is sweet. The bitter taste is from the Khur, a bitter
leguminous plant, which grows among the wheat, and whose grains the people
are too lazy to pick out. There is not a single oak between Bender 'Abbas
and Kerman; none of the inhabitants seemed to know what an acorn was. A
person at Baft, who had once gone to Kerbela via Kermanshah and Baghdad,
recognised my sketch of tree and fruit immediately, having seen oak and
acorn between Kermanshah and Qasr-i-Shirin on the Baghdad road." Major
Sykes writes (ch. xxiii.): "The above description undoubtedly refers to the
main winter route, which runs via Sirjan. This is demonstrated by the fact
that under the Kuh-i-Ginao, the summer station of Bandar Abbas, there is a
magnificent sulphur spring, which, welling from an orifice 4 feet in
diameter, forms a stream some 30 yards wide.
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