THE PERSIAN DESERTS.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 2929, 1 August 1911, Page 7

THE PERSIAN DESERTS.

WHAT WAS THEIR ORIGIN ?

The most amazing fact, perhaps, about the great deserts which cover the face of Eastern Persia is that they are to a large extent compa-

ratively modern in origin. Ihe remains of numerous buildings, villages, cultivated fields, woods, and irrigation channels attest the fact th a t these desert tracks formerly, as in Khotan and the adjoining parts of Central Asia, supported a comparatively large population. To explain the origin of these deserts it has been customary to consider the latter as in great measure the result of the process of deciccation and increasing drought which has undoubtedly been going on in Asia since the glacial period. But a leading factor in the change Has been shown to be the withdrawal of that human agency which actively opposes the encroachments of the outer deserts.

, The very religion of the country, indeed, exhorts its votaries to fight for the land against the desert as a ■ struggle for life. Zoroaster says in j effect: Night and sleep are hostile I powers. By the uprising of the sun ! the power of the demons is restricted. Thanks to the sun, irrigation, agriculture, and other productive works can be carried out whereby the extension of the desert is checked ; and he prescribes the planting of trees, the construction of water chan-

nels, sinking of wells, etc. The collapse of the human resistance to the desert has been ascribed to devastating wars, intertribal raids and terrible blood feuds, and the ravages of murderous robber band* by which the population of entire villages may have been wiped out. Another factor, which we have not seen mentioned, possibly contributes to the advance of the desert—plague. Mesopotamia and the adjoining parts of Central Asia have for long been regarded as the endemic area of bubonic plague, long before the <pidemics of recent years were beard of, so that it seems to us probable that this may have contributed to the depopulation in these region*.—"Saturday Review."