e are about
sixty villages in the district engaged in this industry; they possess
from eighty to one hundred thousand trees, each yielding on an average
from six to nine pounds' weight of fruit a year. The olive as a
fruit-tree has been known in Persia from a comparatively early period,
and it is not surprising to hear the villagers ascribe quite a fabulous
age to some of the old trees, just as in Italy some olives are credited
with an equally astonishing antiquity.

To me it has appeared that the habit the olive has of sending up new
stems from the root of an old trunk--just as the chenar sycamore does in
Persia--may have made the old trees become young again, and thus
present, to succeeding generations in the villages, the look of the same
old trunks. Messrs. Kousis, Theophylactos and Co., of Baku, have
obtained a concession for pressing and refining olive-oil in this
district, and I observed the buildings which they are erecting for their
business rising on the right bank of the river there.

Near Rudbar commences the thick growth of various hard-wood trees, which
flourish well in the damp soil of the Caspian slopes and lowlands, and
in November their foliage was surpassingly lovely, with many warm tints,
from delicate red to deep russet and shades of shot-green and brown. On
some of the high, thickly-wooded hills, the different colours ran in
well-defined belts, showing where particular kinds of trees had found
most favourable soil, and had grasped it to the exclusion of all others.

About forty miles from the Caspian coast I fell in with rain and
mud--such mud as cannot be realized without being seen. I embarked at
Enzelli on board a small Russian steamer, the _Tehran_, which had taken
the place of one of the usual large vessels employed on the
mail-service. The sea was rising as I embarked, and I was lucky in
getting on board before the surf on the bar at the mouth of the lagoon
became impassable. The steamer had five hundred tons of iron cargo on
board, machinery for electric light and other purposes, intended for
Tehran, but which could not be landed owing to the rolling sea. It was
therefore carried back to Baku, a second time within a fortnight, for
accident had prevented it being landed on the previous voyage.

There is always this risk of wind and weather preventing landing at
Enzelli. Proposals have been made to remove the bar sufficiently to
allow steamers of eight hundred tons to pass into the lagoon h