Silence followed this speech of mine. My assailants seemed to be utterly dumbfounded. Its effect, however, was even more startling on my Tartar, who now, for the first time, heard from his hadji fellow-traveller's own lips that he whom he had looked upon as a true believer was a European and that his real name was Vambéry. Pale as death, and with eyes glaring wildly, he stared at me. I was in fact placed between two fires. A sharp side-glance from me restored his equanimity. The Persians too changed their tactics. The name of European, that word of terror for Orientals, produced a magic effect. Terms of abuse were followed by expressions of politeness; menaces by entreaties; and as they earnestly besought me to allow two of the principal members of the escort to share my room, while the others would resign themselves to occupy the barn and the stable, I opened the door to the trembling Persians. My features convinced them at once of the truth of my assertions. Our conversation soon became very lively and friendly, and in the course of half an hour my guests were reposing in a corner of the room, completely stupified by over-indulgence in arrack. There they lay snoring like horses. I then applied myself to the task of explaining matters to my Tartar, and found him, to my agreeable surprise, quite willing to appreciate my explanations. Next morning when I left the snow-clad hills, and rode over the cheerful plain of Damgan, the recollection of the adventure came back to me in all its vividness, and I own that on sober second thoughts I was disposed to quake somewhat on contemplating the unnecessary danger my rashness had exposed me to the preceding night.
Damgan is supposed to be the ancient Hecatompylae (city with the hundred gates); a supposition which our archæologists will maintain at every hazard, although the neighbourhood affords no trace of a city to which the hundred gates might have belonged. Of course one must make large deductions from all assertions made by either Greeks or Persians, who rival each other in the noble art of bragging and exaggerating. If we reduce the hundred gates to twenty, it will still remain a matter of considerable difficulty to discover a city of over twenty gates in the obscure spot now called Damgan. The place boasts of scarcely more than a hundred houses, and two miserable caravansaries in the midst of its empty bazaar are sufficient indications that Damgan's reputation for importance in commercial respects is equally unfounded.
REPUTATION WITHOUT FOUNDATION.From Damgan I travelled over two stations to Simnan, celebrated for its cotton, and still more for its tea-cakes. Almost every town in Persia is conspicuous for some speciality, in the production of which it claims to be not only the foremost in Persia, but unrivalled in the whole world. Shiraz, for instance, is famous for lamb, Isfahan for peaches, Nathenz for pears, and so on. The odd thing about it is, that on arriving in any of these towns and looking for the article so much bragged of, the traveller is either greatly disappointed as to its quality, or, more amusing still, he fails to find the article at all. In Meshed I heard the tea-cakes of Simnan talked of, nay even in Herat; but as I had often had occasion to value these exaggerations at their true worth, I did not expect too much. Nevertheless, I went into the bazaar to inquire after tea-cakes. My search, long and painful, was rewarded by a few mouldy specimens. "Simnan," said one, "is justly celebrated for the excellence of this article, but the export is so tremendous that we are left without any." Another said: "It is true that Simnam was once famous for the production of this article, but hard times have caused even the quality of the tea-cakes to deteriorate." Here at any rate people had the grace to invent some excuses, but in most places not even an apology is attempted; and the unblushing fraud of the pretended claim to the production of some excellent article shows itself without any disguise.
The same sensations which overcame me when I arrived in Meshed, I felt now with even greater intensity as I drew near Teheran, the starting-place of my adventurous journey, where I was to meet so many kind friends who, in all probability, had long ago resigned themselves to the thought of my having paid with my life the penalty of my rash enterprise.
XXIX.
FROM TEHERAN TO TREBIZOND.
The Persian capital appeared to me, when I saw it again, as the very abode of civilization and culture, affording to one's heart's content all the pleasures and refinements of European life. Of course, a traveller from the West, on coming to the city for the first time, is bitterly disappointed in seeing the squalid mud hovels and the narrow and crooked streets through which he must make his way. But to one coming from Bokhara the aspect of the city seems entirely changed. A journey of only sixty days separates one city from the other; but in point of fact, there is such a difference in the social condition of Bokhara and Teheran, that centuries might have divided them from one another. My first ride through the bazaar, after my arrival, made me feel like a child again. Almost with the eagerness of my Tartar companion, my delighted eyes were wandering over articles of luxury from Europe, toys, stuffs and cloths which I saw exhibited there. The samples of European taste and ingenuity then struck me with a sort of awe, which, recalled now, seems to me very comical. It was a feeling, however, of which it was difficult to get rid. When a man travels as I did, and when he has as thoroughly and completely adapted himself to the Tartar mode of life, it is no wonder if, in the end, he turns half a Tartar himself. That doublefacedness in which a man lives, thoroughly aware of his real nature in spite of his outward disguise, cannot be maintained very long with impunity. The constant concealment of his real sentiments, the absorbing work of his assimilating to the utmost elements quite foreign, produce their slow and silent but sure effect, in altering the man himself, in course of time, whether he wishes it or no. In vain does the disguised traveller inwardly rebel against the influences and impressions which are wearing away his real self. The impressions of the past lose more and more their hold on him until they fade away, leaving the traveller hopelessly struggling in the toils of his own fiction, and the rôle he had assumed soon becomes second nature with him.
I formed no exception to the rule in this particular; the change in my behaviour was the theme of many facetious remarks from my European friends, and drew upon me more than once their good-natured sallies. They made my salutations, my gesticulations, my gait, and above all my mode of viewing things in general, an object of their mirth. Many went so far as to insist upon my having been transformed into a Tartar, to my very features; saying that even my eyes had assumed the oblique shape peculiar to that race. This good-natured "chaff" afforded me great amusement. It in no wise interfered with the extreme pleasure I felt in being restored to European society. THE DISCOMFORTS OF CIVILIZATION.Nevertheless, besides the strange sensation of enjoying the rare luxury of undisturb I repose for several weeks, there were many things in the customs and habits of my European friends to which reconciliation caused great difficulty. The close-fitting European dress, especially, seemed to cramp me and to hamper me in my movements. The shaved scalp was ill at ease under the burden of the hair which I allowed to grow. The lively and sometimes violent gestures which accompanied the friendly interchange of views, on the part of the Europeans, looked to me like outbursts of passion, and I often thought that they would be followed by the more energetic argument of rude force. The stiff and measured carriage and walk, peculiar to military people, which I observed in the French officers in the Persian service, seemed to me odd, artificial and stilted. Not but that it afforded me a secret pleasure to have occasion to admire the proud and manly bearing of my fellow Europeans. It presented such a gratifying contrast to the slovenly and slouching gait of the Central Asiatics, amongst whom I had been lately living. It would serve no purpose to point out to my readers, and to multiply, the numerous instances of the strange perversion of views and tastes to which my late experiences among strange Asiatic people had given rise. Those who, from personal observations, are enabled to draw a parallel between life in the East and West, will find no exaggeration in my saying that Teheran compared to Bokhara seemed to be a sort of Paris to me.