Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 735, January 26, 1878

No. 735.
Price 1½ d.
SATURDAY, JANUARY 26, 1878.
Somewhat more than forty years ago, Mr Baillie Fraser published a lively and instructive volume under the title A Winter’s Journey (Tatâr) from Constantinople to Teheran . Political complications had arisen between Russia and Turkey–an old story, of which we are witnessing a new version at the present time. The English government deemed it urgently necessary to send out instructions to our representatives at Constantinople and Teheran; and this could only be done in those days by means of Messengers bold and hardy enough to bear a great amount of fatigue in the saddle. Mr Fraser, intrusted with this duty, told the tale of his hard work. The word Tatâr , in Turkey, is applied to a native courier, guide, and companion, a hardy horseman who fulfils all these functions, speaking two or more languages, and ready to do the best that can be done to overcome the multiplied tribulations of regions almost roadless and innless. When travelling Tatâr, these men have been known to make truly wonderful journeys on horseback. One of special character was made in 1815, when the British government wished to convey to Persia the stirring news of the escape of Napoleon from Elba. The British Embassy at Constantinople sent a Messenger from thence to Demavend, a Persian city nearly two thousand miles distant, across a dangerously rugged country; this amazing horse-ride was accomplished in seventeen days; averaging nearly a hundred and twenty miles a day.
Mr Baillie Fraser gives a vivid description of his own experience in this kind of life, riding day and night, and stopping only when the absolute need of a few hours’ rest drove him into a wretched post-house or a mere hovel. It was ‘a Tatâr journey of two thousand six hundred miles, which for fatigue and anxiety, and suffering from cold and exposure, I will venture to match against anything of the sort that ever was done.’ First came seven hundred and fifty miles across European Turkey, from Belgrade to Constantinople; and then seven hundred along the whole extent of Asia Minor to Amasia; but during the remaining seven weeks of the journey, he says: ‘We have been wading night and day through interminable wastes of deep snow, exposed to all the violence of storms, drift, and wind, with the thermometer frequently from fifteen to twenty degrees below zero. Our clothes and faces and beards were clotted into stiff masses of ice; our boots, hard as iron, frozen to the stirrup; and our limbs tortured with pain, or chilled into insensibility by intense cold.’