A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistán

by Harry De Windt

I purchased, the next morning before starting, a Persian dagger belonging to one of the caravan-men. He was one of the Bakhtiari, a wild and lawless tribe inhabiting a tract of country (as yet unexplored by Europeans) on the borders of Persia and Asia Minor. The blade of the dagger is purest Damascene work, the handle of fossilized ivory. On the back of the blade is engraved, in letters of inlaid gold, in Arabic characters—

"There is one God! He is Eternal!"
"Victory is nigh, O true believer!"

Connoisseurs say that the dagger is over a hundred years old. After quite an hour's haggling (during which our departure was delayed, much to Gerôme's disgust), I managed to secure it for £9 English money, although the Bakhtiari assured me that he had already sworn "by his two wives" never to part with it. I have since been offered four times the amount by a good judge of Eastern weapons.

A second pass, the Kotal Doktar, lay between us and Bushire. Though steep and slippery in places, the path is well protected, and there are no boulders to bar the way. On leaving the caravanserai, we paused to examine the second longest telegraph wire (without support) in the world. It is laid from summit to summit of two hills, and spans a valley over a mile in width. [C]

The country round Meyun Kotal is well cultivated, and we passed not only men, but women, ploughing with the odd-shaped primitive wooden ploughs peculiar to these parts. Near the foot of the pass some children were gathering and collecting acorns, which are here eaten in the form of a kind of bread by the peasantry. Seldom has Nature seemed more beautiful than on that bright cloudless morning, as we rode through sweet-scented uplands of beans and clover, meadows of deep rich grass. By the track bloomed wild flowers, violets and narcissus, shedding their fresh delicate perfume. The song of birds and hum of insects filled the air, bright butterflies flashed across our path, while the soft distant notes of a cuckoo recalled shady country lanes and the sunlit hay-fields of an English summer. It was like coming from the grave, after the sterile deserts and bleak desolate plains of Northern Persia.

There is a small square building at the northern end of the Kotal Doktar, a mud hut, in which are stationed a guard of soldiers to be of assistance in the event of robbery of caravans or travellers. Such cases are not infrequent. Upon our approach, three men armed with flint-locks and long iron pikes accosted us. "We are the escort," said one, apparently the leader, from the bar of rusty gold braid on his sleeve. "You cannot go on alone. It is not safe." We then learnt that a large lion had infested the caravan-track over the pass for some days, and had but yesterday attacked the mail and carried off one of the mules, the native in charge only just escaping by climbing a tree.

Persian travel is full of these little surprises or rather items of news; for one must be of a very ingenuous disposition to be surprised at anything after a journey of any length in that country. If the man had said that an ichthyosaurus or dodo barred the way, I should have believed him just as much. Gerôme sharing my opinion that the report was got up for the sake of extorting a few keráns, we soon sent our informants about their business, and calmly proceeded on our journey. Nevertheless, the Kotal Doktar would not be a pleasant place to encounter the "king of beasts," I thought. The pass consists simply of a narrow pathway four feet wide, on the one side a perpendicular wall of rock, on the other an equally sheer precipice.

"Did you come across the lion?" was Mr. J—— 's first question, as we dismounted at the gate of his telegraph-station at Kazeroon. "I suppose not," he added, seeing the surprise with which I greeted his remark. "We have had three parties out from here this week, but with no luck. I just managed to get a sight of him, and that's all. He is a splendid beast."

Ignorance had indeed been bliss in our case, and I felt some compunction when I remembered how disdainfully we had treated the ragged sergeant and his men. They would have been of no use, except in the way of stop-gaps, like the babies, in cheap prints, that the Russian traveller in the sleigh throws to the wolves to occupy their attention while he urges on his mad career, a pistol in each hand and the reins in his mouth. Still, even for this purpose, they might have been useful, and were certainly worth a few keráns. I was glad not to learn the truth till we reached Kazeroon. The enjoyment of the meal of which we partook at the summit of the pass would have been somewhat damped by the feeling that at any moment a loud roar, bursting out of the silent fastnesses of the Kotal Doktar, might announce the approach of its grim tenant.

There was, after all, nothing very remarkable about the occurrence, for the southern parts of Persia are infested with wild animals of many kinds. Of this I was already aware, but not that lions were among the number.