War and Revolution in Asiatic Russia
which is more salty than the Dead Sea and in whose waters it is impossible to sink. The beaches of the lake are covered with barren shingle. Not a sign of life is seen in its waters, except for a tiny crustacean, like a minute sea-horse. But some of the lagoons were alive with wild duck and geese. Away across the lake to the South lay the great wall of the Assyrian highlands, glowing with red and gold in the August sun. The waters of the lake were deep blue, heaving in limpid waves. I thought of the lines of the famous Persian Sufi, Jalāluʾddīn Rūmī, which Mr. Nicholson has translated:
The vessel of my being was completely hidden in the sea.
The sea broke into waves, and again Wisdom rose
And cast abroad a voice; so it happened and thus it befell.
Foamed the sea, and at every foam-fleck
Something took figure and something was bodied forth.
Every foam-fleck of body, which received a sign from that sea,
Melted straightway and turned to spirit in this ocean.
It was while I was waiting, I had almost said dreaming, by the shores of the lake, that I met Dr. Shedd, the well-known American missionary, who was passing on the road from Urumiah. We sat for an hour in the shade of an olive-tree, while he related to me the terrible experiences that he and his brother missionaries had undergone during the siege of Urumiah the previous winter. His sufferings had been great; and to crown all his wife had died. He and his girls were on their way back to America for a rest.
On the evening of August 22nd I reached the plain of Salmas, which runs out in a long oblong form from the north-west corner of Lake Urumiah. I made my way at once to the city of Dilman, which is surrounded by
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