Found a good room in chupper-khana, but the room for the children is full of camel-tics. Moved them to the roof room, which is supposed to be free. Our room is not safe from them, and at night it is too cold to go outside.
A⸺ will not allow me to sleep in the takhtrowan, so we shall all have to sleep in the room on the roof.
Masreh is a village of merely a few hovels, in a lovely grassy valley. Since Kasvin nothing bare; all grass or cultivation.
All night long we were awake at fits and starts looking for tics. We must have killed twenty. They are ordinary sheep-tics.
They seem exactly the same thing as camel-tics, but smaller, and the bites merely cause a spot (of effused blood) the size of a split pea at biggest.
The camel-tic that bit N⸺ on the top of her head at Doong has caused great soreness, and the blood flowed down all over her face. I was once bitten on the foot, and tenderness lasted two months. Frank and the baby were bitten, each in two places; so was A⸺. I was a little bitten, but not by tics; they leave a round black mark the size of sixpence.
April 26th.—Half-past seven A.M., left for Pah Chenar, a steady ascent for eight miles, then tremendous descents of steepness and difficulty. We had to get off our horses frequently for comfort’s sake, and the baby and N⸺ had three times to get out of the takhtrowan, while the children had twice to leave the kajawehs.
The takht horses were continually with their hind-quarters within three inches of the ground at the descents, and sliding along.
The scenery was grand in the extreme, and the weather, fortunately, fine. Small shrubs and wild roses now begin to be frequent. When at the top of the mountain, two farsakhs from Masreh, the view was gigantic. One saw far beyond Kasvin, over the plains and into deep valleys, which reached for miles, and were of every shade of grey, red, green, and brown; some hills even were bright orange; and such a bird’s-eye view was it when we commenced the descent that I, who have seen many places, never certainly saw anything so vast and magnificent.
It could not be called pretty till we got within a farsakh of Pah Chenar. Then it was all green in the bottom of the valley, in which ran a small, swift, and turbid river, or rivulet at the present time, doubtless a month earlier a swirling torrent.