AN EXTRAORDINARY VILLAGE.

Western Star, Issue 987, 3 October 1885, Page 2 (Supplement)

AN EXTRAORDINARY VILLAGE.

About one hundred miles from Teheran we found a remarkable village called Lasgrid, The people ascribe an, immense antiquity to it, and say that Las, or Last, a son of Noah, drew on the ground the “ gird ” or circle, which ia the plan of the structure. The herd of this legend i? not very familiar to Biblical , scholars in the but he is not unknown in Afghanistan. The Coliseum at Borne, although an oval, would convey some idea of the general appearance of Lasgrid, only it must be conceived as built of mud, which is almost the only building of this country. The, rude walls are thick and solid at the base, and rise some 30 or 40 feet, where there is a line of doors, with here and there a small window between them. By means of protecting beams, or branches of trees, over which smaller branches are laid, a'kind of gallery is* produced, with absolutely no protection on the edge. Yet we saw women and children, sheep and goats upon them; a more frail and dangerous-looking arrangement it would be hard to conceive. There are two tiers of houses all round, and in some houses there appeared to be three. All had these galleries in front, either to commutficafce with the next house, or, as some did not communicate, they were only of use to come out upon to sit, or work, or for the childrdn to’play upon. There was|no getting up to these galleries' from the outside; that would have suited the Turcomans, The means of going up was all on the inside, In some cases there are rough steps' of mud, and in others there are inclined planes, half ladder and'half road, made in the same way as the galleries. These lead up to galleries communicating with the houses, which were an exact repetition of those on the outside, the only difference being that they were not so high up, and there were walls at places which did duty as a parapet; hence the certainty of falling over did not seem quite from the inside as on the outside. While looking at this strange structure from one of these upper galleries on old woman at least 70 years of ( age passed me with a child stuck ia some primitive way on her back. IA few yards from me was one of those means of ascent formed of sticks with the remains of mud hanging to it, It would have done for fowls to go up to their roosts upon. She clambered up on this to the gallery above, but that was not her destination; her house was one up still higher in a corner, and to reach it she had to crawl up on the edge of a crumbling mud wall, not above eighteen inches wide. On hei left hand was a perpendicular descent, enough to make anyone dizzy, and ’death at the bottom of it, if a fall should occur, Although on the other side there was only ajfew feet, if the old creature had slipped, the chances are that she would have rolled down and fallen over the gallery with her baby on The old lady went up very steadily, and reached her crow’s nest in perfect safety. The dwellings If the people were all on the upper

was filled up with strange moss structures, which are now falling to decay, as there is no longer any danger from the Turcomans. These places were for containing the grain of the village, and for receiving the live stock of the villagers when a raid occurrrd. One of a number of wells was pointed out to us within a circle, and we were told that they had three or four which were always kept in good order 4 in the days of danger. There is only one entrance to this circle, and that is small, scarcely four feet in height, to which there is a stone door working with a pivot and socket similar to the ancient stone doors found in the Hauran and other parts of the Soudan. This stone door of Lasgrid is a very rude one, being eight inches thick in some parts, and it tells its tale of the existence of great, danger and the necessity for protection.