“Can you get me a wash?”
“Come along a’ me, mate.” The man took me down to what seemed the fo’cassel, and placed a bucket of water before me.
I said, “Come, is this the accommodation you give your first-class passengers?”
The man roared with laughter.
“No yer doant, mate, no yer doant. I never seed no first-class passengers with luggage like that,” pointing to my hold-all; and it was only on producing my coupon book, that the man could be persuaded I was not a deck passenger, and to take me to the saloon aft.
As I was covered with coal dust, and generally grimy—the opportunities for washing being then not what they are now in Russia and Germany—the hold-all had made the man sure that I was an impostor.
We came in the afternoon of the third day into Hamadan, having done the stages in fair time. The journey was without incident, save that a string of antelopes crossed the road in broad daylight some ten yards ahead of us. As they appeared so suddenly, we neither of us thought of using our revolvers. Hamadan looked pretty as we entered it, and was surrounded by apparently interminable gardens. On turning a corner we came upon Captain Pierson, under whom I was to serve, and of whose division I was in medical charge. He had ridden out to meet us.
In the early days of the Persian Telegraph it was usual to ride out with the departing, and to do the same to meet the coming guest.
This is the Persian custom of the “istikhbal,” or ceremonious riding out to meet the new arrival; being a very important ceremony, regulated by hard-and-fast rules: such as that the greater the personage, the further must the welcomer travel; while the lesser the welcomer, the further must he go. Thus, in the case of a new governor of Shiraz, the king’s son, the big men rode out three stages, the ex-governor one, while some actually went as far as Abadeh, or seven days’ journey; but these were mostly merchants or small people.