Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 February 1919 — DESOLATE CITY IS NISHAPUR [ARTICLE]

DESOLATE CITY IS NISHAPUR

Horn* of Writer of the Rubaiyat Ono of the Most Forbidding Spots ==— Ths isolated city of Nishapur. in Persia, was the home of the Persian Best known of all his nation to the western world —Omar, surnamed of the Rubaiyat. The poet is still one of the great historic figures in his ancient city, but he is remembered there not as a poet or a tentmaker but as a sage, philosopher, astronomer and mathematician. Nishapur Ues in a barren upland plain, many days' overland journey from the nearest railroad point. It Is encircled by mountains, most of which range, however, rises to a considerable height, and through many months of the year its peaks are white with snow. The lower slopes have a curious reddish tint, due to iron in the earth, so that rare and delicate color combinations are formed at dawn and twilight. * Looking southward from his city. Omar saw a level. featureless plain, depressingly treeless, save for here and there a clump of slender poplars. The winter turned it to a lifeless gray; in the summer, pitiless" sunlight and choking dust tormented the eyes. Only tor a brief spring season did the fresh green of growing crops, the cool mists that rose after the early rains and the rainbow gleams of pale color from the mountains lend the vista a melancholy charm. Beyond the plain rose another row of low hills, and beyond that, he knew, stretched the endies* desert. Each year-a few weeks of joy and beauty; between mountain and desert a few miles of half kindly man-tllled earth—blts of respite that hardly broke the hostile round of nature —It is easier to understand the defiant pessimism of the Rubaiyat after seeing Nishapur. — Chicago Daily News.