THE WELL OF DEATH.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1478, 9 February 1887, Page 2

THE WELL OF DEATH.

(The Spectator.) Some two miles from Shirsz, Dear the tombs of the poets, ii a large garden— thai if Dilgoosha (Heartsease). In tfaia girdpn, uuder its luxuriant oranga«tree* f tho are aocn&tomed to pionie all the year round ; and from this garden ft itiff climb brings you to the Well of Death. What was the origin of tbt« well: who made it; whether it was a pl*oo for the drawing of water, a kind of granary, or a mine is doubtful. No one knows Ita age. No ono his Rounded its depths suecefsfully. No one knows If it be a dry well, or if there be water m its depths. Every child m Sbiraz knows it; every child haa flu<>g pebbles m, listening to th •'. nn; nding eohoas as the ssones fell inta ;Ib v fMhoaiod depths. Aad with a cars* the little one baa bpat, by its mother**: instigition, into the 'grave of faithieu women.' There it is, a great square yawoing hole m the gwy rco*c, with no balustrade. The sparse mountain herbage is trodden away around ita brink by gene* rations of the onrioua who have peeped down m awe. 1b ia tot so very longainoa the puninhment was oarriod out, Tha wretched woman waa placed on a donkey bareheaded her face to iho tail. Her hair, the Persian woman's chief glory, waa shaven ; her faoe, formerly bo jealously veiled, w*s bare. The donkey was lt»d by the exeoutioner m his red robe of office* Preceding the wretchad vlotim wore the hired mnsiolaui, baffoonp, and dancers of the town, and a few of the lower and more abandoned of the female riffraff of a great Eastern city. The rest of a hage orowd was ma le up of a mob of men Jtxd boys, who shouted and laughed as if they were about to attend some fair. ' Horsemen, too, rode with the shonting orowd as far as the foot of the steep hiil. The farraah-hashi (literally, the chief carpet, spreader), the i rinoipal exeootlve (poliot) officer of the Governor of the Province, with a few polioemen, Beenied to be among the few respectable persons present : h« X of oourie, attended lv his official d»paolty» Riba d songs were sting by the hired buffoons, and the mua ! clans played thai* loudest, a* all scrambled up the mountain track. -The prisoner was ba f-dragged, half-oarrled up by two of the ezeoutioner's assistants for the path is to steep for any beast of burden. Poor wretch ! the had been mercifully half-ntapefiod withopian. The mob at length reached the top. Tha woman was seated, her hands bound behind her back, at the very brink of the> well. She was told to recite the Muistti* man profession of falthr 'There la BO God bat God. Mahommed is the ap'oatl* of God.' She was silent; some oh« muttered it for her. The exeoationei t half-drunken as he was, as Is the oastoa m Perola, to nerve him to hii wovk k stepped forward. ' Begone 1* he »hoDted, spurned her with hta foot, and th» dltappeared.