The Pulaskian., 1916-01-28
PERSIA'S OLD CAPITAL
TEHERAN A CITY THAT HAS SEEN
 MANY vIcISSITUDEs.
Now the Center of Warning Interests That Threaten Its Very Existence Mot an Especially Healthy
 Place in Summer Months.

PIace Tn summer MontnS.
 The capital of a small buffer state between three clashing empires, the English, Russian and Ottoman empire, Teheran in recent years, and more es- pecially since the outbreak of the great war, has had an importance thrust upon it of most embarrassing kind, begins war primer of the Ma tional Geographic society. Geograph- ically of greater interest to each of the groups of contending powers than any other neutral capital Persian Teheran is experiencing insuperable difficulties in keeping it's destiny clear of those of the warning giants around it.
 Teheran, according to the Persian, is very beautiful, but the praise of his country's capital is seldom sup ported unreservedly by the western CT; for he finds the Persian city of Shiraz far more beautiful and Is- fahan the peer of the residence. The capital lies 79 miles south of the Caspian sea, on plateau of coarse sand and gravel, which is fringed by low, distant hills, and, to the north, by some higher mountains. Mount pamavand is the key to the city's setting, towering in the northeast to a magnificent crest of 19,400 feet high. To the southward stretch level lands, which lose themselves in waste and desert.
 The East and West meet and mingle as oil and water in the shahs metropo lis. Teheran is, of course, purely Oriental city, but, like all eastern cen ters of importance, it has suffered such encroachments from the West as street cars, telegraphs, gas lighting and severely dyed and tailored clothes for men. It is backward in it's development and uneven in it's inn provement. Its Boulevard des Ambas- sadeurs is more or less of splendid thoroughfare and it is lined with a Flu ropean type of shops, two good hotels and number of fine native palaces. It has one of the largest military parade grounds in the world-550 by $50 yards roughly paved with strewn cobble stones.
 The modern city is not so very old, as it came into existence less than TOO years ago, about the time that ancient Ragha, the crumbling suburb to the south, began to sink into ob- Hyion. Ragha, known in the time of Alexander the Great as Ragae. was the birthplace of Harun al-Rashid, and at one time the golden capital of Parthia. In the days of it's supremacy 1t was as vain and rich and showy as storied Hamadan, the pride of earliest Persia, the city of seven walls in seven colors, with palaces wrought in gold and silver and frescoed with precious stones. Modern Teheran is the in heritor of the traditions and the pride of Ragae and of Hamadan and of the ancient honors of Pasargadae and Per sepolis. With the rise of Teheran, Media regained the place that it lost to Persia in the time of Cyrus.
 Anarchy has ruled within the capi- tai in way more or less pronounced
 h6 enO idoC 5ef0rdl years, ana the people of the city have accom- plished little toward it's moderniza. tion and development of it's impor- tance as a place of commerce and manufacture. There is an important caravan trade, which passes through Teheran toward the Russian borders. and a certain manufacture of cot ton, linen, carpets, shoes and iron products. It's business is enough 10 give support to a population of about 260,O00, in which are included about 600 Europeans.
 The climate of Teheran is not a favorable one and especially are the summers unhealthy, when all of the people who can get away go to the foothills in the north. Writing in 1596, Persian gives a pathetic summary of Teheran summer. He says that the air was too hot and even smelly that the water was heavy and unwholesome and, in short, everything so bad that the Angel of Death ran away rom 1t. But, then, this author wrote shortly after a fearful cholera plague had passed over the city. The nearby contrast of the cool summer gardens in the foothills, likely. has conspired to give the Teheran summer a bad standing.