In the land of the lion and sun, or, modern Persia

by C. J. Wills

In the foods the great thing is to get variety. Butter should be melted and run into a champagne bottle for cooking purposes, while fresh and good butter may be bought in each large town and carried in tins salted, for four stages, or more if in winter.

Small tent carpets are needed, large ones are useless, and two small ones are better than one of larger size, as they fit in better, or carpet two rooms. A small broom is needful. Copper pots for cooking, and enamelled iron cups and tin plates as being less bulky than copper are required. Bottles when emptied should be repacked to avoid smashes; all bottles should be in straw envelopes. Short carriage candles are good and need no candlesticks—being thick they stand upright.

A table should be made of a board three feet long by two and a half wide, with a cross piece near each end underneath; this is merely laid on cross trestles held together by a string.

Folding chairs, not camp stools, should be taken, and they should be strong and covered merely with canvas; thick stuff gets wet, and keeps so. The best chair is with a buckle, so as to raise for dining, or lower for lounging; by putting on a movable foot-piece of two small iron rods and a bit of canvas, a fair and very comfortable bedstead is produced, and no mattress needed. No mattresses should ever be used, but as coarse chaff is procurable everywhere, large bags should be taken, the size of a mattress, half filled with it, and shaken down; these beds are warm (and cool in hot weather), fairly soft, and hold no insects. Pillows must be carried; linen pillow-cases are best.

All “jims,” such as naphtha stoves, spirit lamps, air cushions, cork mattresses, iron bedsteads, are practically useless, as they are either so light as to smash, or so heavy as to be a nuisance. Everything should be of the commonest and strongest materials.

Bullock trunks are the best kind of clothes box, but should have no straps (the straps are always stolen), but strong brass hasps for two padlocks for each trunk are a very good thing, as locks sometimes open from a severe jar. As for bed-clothes, sheets are a great comfort; I never travelled without them; they should be also carried through Russia. Red or Vienna coloured blankets are the best, and should be carried in a “mafrash band,” or big carpet waterproof trunk; the carpets should be laid over all, and these with the man on top of them keep the bedding dry. These mafrash bands serve also to hold all odds and ends.

Bread should be taken on from each stage, as it may not be got or be very bad at the next, and when not wanted is gratefully accepted by the servants. A double supply should be got at each large town, as it is always good there.

At the big towns, too, very good “bazaar Kabobs” of chopped meat (they are eaten hot), also biscuits and dried fruits, may be had. The tea must be Indian, as that sold in Persia is very inferior.

Milk, as a rule, can only be got at sunset, and a tin or two of it is useful.

It is always better to go to a post-house, or chupper-khana, than to a caravanserai, as the noise of mules and camels is avoided, and the loud cries which resound on the arrival or departure of a caravan, which generally takes place at midnight or dawn.