The sides of the mound are streaked with open drains, that carry off all the sewage from the interior, and must render the places above a very unwholesome and disagreeable habitation. The place seemed pretty crowded, and numbers of its inhabitants looked down upon us from the balconies running in front of their chambers. The community thus crowded together must, judging from our single night’s experience, lead a life of constant wrangling and quarrelling. The voices of querulous old women and obstreperous children, and the rebukes of angry husbands, kept us awake all night, with not the best of wishes bestowed upon the Lásjirdis. This place looks unique of its kind, but I am told that Yazdikhast is built on a similar plan.
Our next stage was twenty-five miles to Dih Namak. Set out from Lásjird at 1.30 A.M., and crossing three or four deep ravines by masonry bridges, passed on to a stony desert hill skirt that falls quickly to the southward, where it merges into the salt desert, which glistens in the morning sunlight as white as snow. At half-way we passed a deserted village and ruined sarae, but on all the route saw no cultivation or habitation.
The country is very uninteresting, and no incident occurred to enliven the march or occupy our thoughts, and hence I suppose the unwonted attention devoted to the peculiarities of our own surroundings. We were marching in the usual order of procession—that is to say, the Mirakhor Jáfar Beg, in his handsome Kashmir-shawl-pattern coat, led the way, with a couple of mounted grooms, each leading a yadak, or handsomely caparisoned horse, by which, according to the custom of the country, all men of rank are preceded when they take the saddle. Next came ourselves, and behind us followed our personal servants, the Mirzá, and the escort. The last had now dwindled down to only half-a-dozen horsemen. Our heavy baggage with the camels generally went ahead overnight, and the mules with our light tents, &c., followed in rear of our procession.
The Mirakhor, always serious in look, yet strictly deferential in his bearing, was always ready with a reply to any and every query, and, as may be conjectured, with no possible reliance on any of them. “Mirakhor!” “Bale” (“Yes”). “The village of Sarkhrúd lies on our route to-day. How far may it be from this?” “Yes, I know the place. You see that hill ahead? Well it is just a farsakh beyond.” We move on, prepared for another eight miles before we alight for breakfast; but on cresting a low marly ridge ahead, a village buried in gardens lies below us. “What village is this, Mirakhor?” “This is Sarkhrúd. Will you breakfast here?” “Why, you said it was a farsakh beyond that hill.” Without moving a muscle, or evincing a trace of discomposure, he merely replies, “This side the hill. This is Sarkhrúd. Will you alight for breakfast here?”
The way this man ate his own words was surprising, but the way, under a quiet undemonstrative demeanour, he gathered in his mudákhil, was more so; for, not content with charging double rates all round, he charged for larger quantities than were actually supplied. By the merest accident I gained an insight into the system of corruption carried on under the specious rights of mudákhil, for the extent of which I was not at all prepared. Our Afghan companions kept their expenditure accounts distinct from ours, and it was from what I heard from them regarding our Mirakhor’s desire to cater for them too, that I first got an inkling of the liberality of his views in the matter of perquisites, and his anxiety to prevent the extent of them becoming known, by an attempt to get the whole management into his own hands. Rogues sometimes fall out amongst themselves, and so it happened one day that a quarrel amongst our stable establishment threatened a disclosure of their dishonest dealings. The Mirakhor, however, was master of the situation, and the contumacious groom who demanded a larger share of the spoil than his chief chose to give him was summarily dismissed, and turned adrift on the line of march, on the accusation of selling for his own profit grain given to him for the feed of the horses under his charge. “Clever man!” whispered the observers, as their respect for the Mirakhor’s savoir faire increased with his success. “He deserves to prosper. You see he has got the upper hand of his enemy. Any complaint he may hereafter prefer against the Mirakhor will be declared malicious. Was he not deprived of his post and turned adrift for a fault exposed by him?”
The discharged groom followed our party for several hundred miles, up to the capital, and, what was more surprising, came out, in his disgrace and downfall, in a new suit of broadcloth and silks, in place of the discarded attire of his late mean occupation, and certainly looked, so far as outward appearances go, the most respectable of our servants. The Mirakhor after this coup affected a character for honesty, and was more punctual than ever in the observance of his religious duties. As the sun lit up the horizon, he, and he alone, would move off the road, dismount, and, facing the Cablá, perform his morning prayers, and then galloping up, resume his position at the head of our party, with self-satisfied pride in his singular devotion.
Dih Namak is a wretched collection of huts round a dilapidated fort on the edge of the desert. Close by is a substantial and commodious sarae. Our camp was at first pitched on the plain to its west, but the wind blew with such force from the west, and raised such clouds of dust, that we were obliged to strike the tents and take refuge in the sarae—a move of very doubtful advantage; for though we escaped the violence of the wind, we were almost stifled by the whirling eddies of stable dust and litter, and tormented by myriads of the voracious little insects bred in its deep layers.
1st June.—We set out from Dih Namak at 1.30 A.M., and marched twenty-four miles to Kishlác, facing a high north-west wind, sensibly warm even at this early hour, nearly the whole way. Our route was westerly, skirting the Ferozkoh range of hills to our right, and having a bare desert away to the left. The country is generally flat, dotted by a succession of villages, and crossed by numerous branches of the Hubla rivulet, which drains to the desert, and irrigates on its way a wide surface of corn land.
At eight miles we came to the Padih village, and leaving a cluster of four or five others on the right and left of the road, at two miles farther came to Arazan, where there is a telegraph-office. Arazan is the chief town of the Khár bulúk of the Veramín district, and is one of the granaries of Tehran, and consequently by no means the “very mean” country, one of our party facetiously styled it.