It is to be noticed that executions are not nearly so frequent now, as on my first experiences of Persia.
CHAPTER XIX.
MY JOURNEY HOME AND MARCH TO SHIRAZ.
Julfa quarters—Buy a freehold house—I ornament, and make it comfortable—Become ill—Apply for sick leave—Start marching—Telegram—Begin to post—Reach Teheran—Obtain leave—Difficulty at Kasvin—Punishment of the postmaster—Catch and pass the courier—Horses knock up—Wild beasts—Light a fire—Grateful rest—Arrive at Resht—Swamp to Peri-Bazaar—Boat—Steamer—Moscow—Opera—Ballet—Arrive in England—Start again for Persia—Journey viâ Constantinople—Trebizonde—Courier—Snow—Swollen eyes—Detail of journey from Erzeroum to Teheran—The races—Ispahan—Leave for Shiraz—Persian companions—Dung-beetles—Mole crickets—Lizards—Animals and birds—The road to Shiraz—Ussher’s description—Meana bug legend again.
Finding my quarters in Julfa extremely inconvenient and small, I bought a little house and did it up after my own ideas of comfort. The place was originally two houses and formed the quarters of two sergeants, but by purchasing both houses, which I got for sixty pounds, freehold, with an indisputable title, I was able to make a very comfortable place indeed.
I had two large and airy summer rooms, cool in the extreme, and admitting currents of air in every direction. A large anteroom opened into a smaller room, when the doors were closed nearly air-tight, with a large fireplace. This was my winter room; and in it I made a shutter opening into the anteroom by which meals were served without opening the door: these arrangements were needed, as Ispahan is bitterly cold in the winter. There were two cool upper rooms, one of which by a grated window looked on the street over the doorway. Besides this there were three warm and sheltered bedrooms on the ground floor of fair size, for winter, all with fireplaces. There was much good dry cellar accommodation, a good kitchen and servants’ quarters, a small garden in the outer courtyard shaded by trellised vines, and I planted about fifty fruit-trees, which cost from threepence to sixpence each, in the inner one. The whole was surrounded by a high wall of some twenty feet, built of mud bricks; around the inner side of the parallelogram formed by this outer wall were built the rooms. There were heavy wooden outer doors, and within them a large arched doorway where the business of the house, with tradesmen, forage-sellers, etc., was conducted. I had also a room for my dispensary, and a granary.
And all this freehold for sixty pounds! Is it not a poor man’s paradise?
On completing my purchase I proceeded to spend four hundred kerans, or sixteen pounds, in painting, plastering, wall-building; whitening or staining pale blue the interior of the rooms (the building was happily in thorough repair), paving my anteroom, six by four yards square, with white and blue encaustic tiles, kargilling or plastering with mud the whole outside of walls, roof, and rooms; putting in two windows of coloured glass, and painting, gilding, plastering, and decorating my dining or living room, and my best bedroom de haut en bas. In fine, for about eighty pounds, I had a freehold house, wind, water, and cold proof, with large and cool quarters in summer, or warm in winter, a paved courtyard; and the happy feeling that I was in my own place and could do what I pleased to it, and that anything that I did was not a case of sic vos non vobis.
The superintendence of my alterations gave me pleasant occupation, and, like Robinson Crusoe, I felt time slip quickly away. But I had hardly been a year in the house when I went home on leave, and ultimately the place was sold by auction for sixty pounds with all my improvements! A friend of mine in 1880 wished to purchase it, but the then owner declined one hundred and sixty pounds for his bargain.
About September I had a severe attack of typhoid fever, and became on my convalescence extremely depressed. I could not regain my strength, and I applied for sick leave to England. I was told to march up by easy stages to Teheran and appear before a medical board. I started with my cook and a groom, and each evening I nearly made my mind up to go no further, so utterly done up did I feel. In this depressed condition I arrived at Kashan: here I got a telegram from Colonel S⸺, the Director, telling me that he was leaving Teheran the next day with Sir A. Kemball, the British Resident at Baghdad, who was going home on leave by the last steamer, that of course I could not catch that, and so he kindly invited me to stay in Teheran with him till I was myself again and able to return to duty.