I throw a veil over our sufferings. How we regretted the clean new post-house at Meana, and how glad we were to leave Turcomanchai[2] at the earliest break of dawn! The insects, however, were merely fleas, B flats, and those nameless to ears polite.
There was little or no snow on the road as we started, but it was sufficiently cold; the roads were hard, good, but full of loose stones.
Such was the journey—each day a repetition of that before it, varied only in weather.
February 12, after going 480 miles chupper, we were met about twenty miles from Teheran by Major S⸺, the director of the Persian telegraph department, Mr. B⸺, my medical chief, and Messrs. T⸺ and M⸺, secretaries of the English Legation, all friends of Colonel G⸺’s.
They escorted us to a place called Kerrij, a palace of the Shah’s, gave us a sumptuous dinner, and we lay down to sleep in huge rooms gay with paint, gilding, and coloured glass. A mighty brew of egg-flip prevented a wakeful night; and the next morning we rode over a muddy plain to Major S⸺’s house in Teheran, which was to be my home till I started for “down country.”
CHAPTER III.
TEHERAN.
Teheran—The Director’s house—Persian visits—Etiquette—Pipes, details of—Tumbakū—Ceremony—Anecdote—The voice of the sluggard—Persian medicine explained—My prospects as a medico—Zoological Gardens.
Teheran struck me as a poor place, particularly from the outside of the town; the streets were narrow, and the houses seemed mostly of plastered mud, or of mud alone. And when we reached Major S⸺’s house, on the outside the prospect was not inviting, but no sooner were we inside than everything was comfortable: good doors, good windows, carpets of great beauty, chairs—only try to do without these for a few days, and then, and then only, does one appreciate their comfort—big settees and divans, and a host of smart and attentive servants. Tea and pipes at once; a warm bath, much needed, in prospect, and, above all, the freedom from the morning’s call to boot-and-saddle at an unearthly hour.
No sooner was breakfast over than messages were for ever arriving for my chief as to what time he would receive this grandee or that friend; and shortly the ceremonious visits commenced. I was, of course, only too glad to see what a Persian visit was like.