Morning journal and courier., 1888-11-16
THE sHAH,s GEoGRAPHx
Painful Suspicion That HIS SIaHn
 New Lake Is araud.

Painful Suspicion That HIs SIarnge
 New Lake Is araud.
 The Shad of Persia is dabbling in geogra- phy, says the New York Sun. A recent issue of the Ivan, the official gazette of Te- heran, contains an article, purporting to have been prepared by the Shah himself, descrp- tive of strange new lake of dimensions large enough to make almost an inland sea, that has of late years appeared in the great salt desert the "Dasht-i-Kavir.n The ground in this desert is covered with white crust of salt:it is habitable only in few isolated spots, andthere are said to be vast morasses, escape from wpich is impossible once trav- eller ventures into them. Tradition is, how ever, that once this tract was covered by . sea, with numerous ports aud harbers, light houses and commerce. There has always | been sort of expection among the Persians l that some day the sea would return and eov- 1 CT the desert, and now 8 large body of water has actually appeared in the northwest cor- l ner of the desert 35 miles from Teberan. The interest occasioned by this was so great that l the Shah himself visited the spot in his ac- count of it he says that small lake, known 1 as the f'Lake of Savah," formerly existed there, but that it ''dried up about 1857 years 1 ago the day the Prophet-may the blessings l of God be upon him and his posterity-was born. It reappeared abour six years age" l The shape of this new body of water the Shah describes in homely fashion. He says; 'fThe 1 figure of the lake compared to that of pair of spectacles There are two lakes joined by i 8 narrow channel which is about two miles 1 in width or little lsss." The Shah wears spectacles. The size of the lake he give at 100 miles in circumference. As its origin life says:
 l From observations which have been made
 we conclude that this take has been formed
 by waters which bubbled up in the Kavir
 like fountains from underground, for the rivers which flow into it have not changed their direction and did not form lake. A camel driver of the Arab nomads of the Kelekn tribe which has its camping ground
 on the shores of lake told us that he had seen | with his own eyes how six years ogo great quantity of water bubled up in the middle of the Kavir, and gradually increasing, finally submerged the places where it had appear ed."
 Sad to say, in spite of the Shah'r apparen. l ly honesty has efforts to tell the truth about | his new lake there is narrowing suspicion l that his honesty has been fooled and that in- l stead of the lake that disappeared on the day
 the prophet was born reappeared now out of
 the bosom of the earth into which 1t vanish l ed, the new body of water has it's origin in a l much less mysterious fashien. There is 8 coincidence between the date of the appear auce of the new lake and that oe the opening of new road frhm Teneran to Kour which l becomes irregular in view of the fact that
 the lake covers up and renders impossible 1 the old road It is also stated that there is 8
 break in the dyke of the Kurs Chai, a river through which the water flows into the new lake. Near the gap livee Persian noble- 1 man, who has an interest in the tolls of the | new road.