Water is plentiful in the Elburz, and situated in well-watered valleys and gorges are innumerable flourishing villages, embosomed in gardens and orchards, with extensive cultivated fields and meadows, and at higher altitudes small plateaus, under snow until March or April, afford cool camping grounds to the nomads of the plains, and luxuriant grazing to their sheep and cattle during the summer.
The valleys have for the most part been deeply excavated by mountain streams; the apparently inaccessible heights are crowned by numerous villages, castles or cloisters embosomed among trees.
The orchards and gardens in which many villages are embosomed yield delicious fruits of almost every description, and great quantities, dried, are exported, principally to Russia.
The rich oasis of Tyin contains many villages embosomed in palm groves and surrounded with orchards and fields.