Persia

Ports of call, who horizons far at the world's end, strange, fascinating lands beckon us, bid us revel in their exophic splendours.

Come with us tonight as we make Persia our port of call. Skirting the desert shores of Arabia, our steamer enters the Persian Gulf and drops anchor in the harbor of Kormusa, Persia's principal deepwater port. Here, east meets west.

Dirty, grimy tankers of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company lie at anchor beside the teen-rigged Arabian merchant vessels. The triangular striped sails shrieking brilliant colors against the drab, black and grey of the vessels of Europe. On the key, barrels of crude oil but recently pumped by pipeline from Abaddon stand close to bales of priceless Kurdistan-y rugs, just arrived by Camelback across hundreds of miles

of shimmering desert. Here are the fuck-years, the vendors of sweet meats and Persian melons, the sellers of pottery, here to the shipping point for Persia's opium, and here the southern terminus of the railroad, which one day will carry the traveler north hundreds of miles to Tehran, the capital.

But today we must journey by automobile, or if adventurous enough, by camelback, Persia's surest method of transportation. In Tehran, Millennium Old Market City, Risa Shah Palevi, King of Kings by grace of his astute political ability, is building a modern capital, stretching wide tree-lined boulevards through the ancient bazaars, demolishing blocks of mosques and mudhouses to make way for beautiful

government buildings, forcing progress on the ageless east. Above Tehran, Mount Demovin, the thrusts its eternally snow-capped peak 18,000 feet into the clear blue Persian sky. It was upon this legend crowned mountain, some say, that 3,000 years ago dwelt the first great sage of antiquity, Zarathustra, while he meditated upon good and evil.