Kûm, Feb. 21.
At five yesterday afternoon Abbas Khan rode in saying that the taktrawan, with the orderly much better, was only three miles off. This was good news; a mattress was put down for him next the fire and all preparations for his comfort were made. Snow showers had been falling much of the day, there was a pitiless east wind, and as darkness came on snow fell persistently. Two hours passed, but no taktrawan arrived. At 7.30 Abbas Khan was ordered to go in search of it with a good lantern; 8, 9, 10 o'clock came without any news. At 10.30, the man whose corpse I had feared to see came in much exhausted, having crawled for two miles through the mire and snow. The sowar, who pretended to start with the lantern, never went farther than the coffee-room at the gate, where he had spent an unconscientious but cheery evening!
In the pitch darkness the taktrawan and mules had fallen off the road into a gap, the taktrawan was smashed, and a good white mule, one of the "light division," was killed, her back being broken. This was not the only disaster. Hadji had lain down on the borrowed mattress and it had taken fire from the live ashes of his pipe and was burned, and he was a little scorched.
The telegraphist was to have started for Isfahan the next morning with his wife and child in the litter, in order to vacate the house for the new official and his family, and their baggage had actually started, but now they are detained till this taktrawan can be repaired. In the meantime another official has arrived with his goods and a large family, a most uncomfortable situation for both parties, but they bear it with the utmost cheerfulness and good nature.
Last night I made Hadji drink a mug of hot milk with two tablespoonfuls of brandy in it, and it worked wonders. This morning, instead of a nearly blind man groping his way about with difficulty, I beheld a man with nothing the matter but a small speck on one eye. It must have been snow-blindness. He looks quite "spry." It is not only the alcohol which has cured him, but that we are parting by mutual consent; and feeling sorry for the man, I have given him more than his wages, and his full demand for his journey back to Bushire, with additional warm clothing. M—— has also given him a handsome present.
I fear he has deceived me, and that the stone deafness, feebleness, idiocy, and the shaking, palsied gait of a man of ninety—all but the snow-blindness—have been assumed in order to get his return journey paid, when he found that the opportunities for making money were not what he expected. It is better to be deceived twenty times than to be hard on these poor fellows once, but he has been exasperating, and I feel somewhat aggrieved at having worked so hard to help a man who was "malingering." The last seen of him was an active, erect man walking at a good pace by the side of his mule, at least forty years thrown off. [He did not then leave Kûm, but being seized with pleurisy was treated with great kindness by Mr. Lyne the electrician, and afterwards by the Amin-es-Sultan (the Prime Minister), who was visiting Kûm, and who, thinking to oblige me, brought him up to Tihran in his train!] Those who had known him for years gave a very bad account of him, but said that if he liked he could be a good servant. It is the first time that I have been unfortunate in my travelling servant.
The English telegraph line, and a post-office, open once a week, are the tokens of civilisation in Kûm. A telegraphic invitation from the British Minister in Tihran, congratulatory telegrams on our safety from Tihran, Bushire, and India, and an opportunity for posting letters, make one feel once more in the world. The weather is grim, bitterly cold, with a strong north-east wind, raw and damp, but while snow is whitening the hills only rain and sleet fall here. The sun has not shone since we came, but the strong cold air is invigorating like our own climate.
Taking advantage of it being Friday, the Mohammedan day of rest, when most of the shops are closed and the bazars are deserted, we rode through a portion of them preceded by the wild figure of Abbas Khan, and took tea at the telegraph office, where they were most kind and pleasant regarding the accident which had put them to so much inconvenience.
Kûm is on the beaten track, and has a made road to Tihran. Almost every book of travels in Persia has something to say upon it, but except that it is the second city in Persia in point of sanctity, and that it thrives as much by the bodies of the dead which are brought in thousands for burial as by the tens of thousands of pilgrims who annually visit the shrine of Fatima, and that it is renowned for fanaticism, there is not much to say about it.
Situated in a great plain, the gleam of its golden dome and its slender minarets is seen from afar, and the deep green of its orchards, and the bright green of the irrigated and cultivated lands which surround it, are a splash of welcome fertility on the great brown waste. Singular toothy peaks of striated marl of brilliant colouring—red, blue, green, orange, and salt peaks very white—give a curious brilliancy to its environment, but this salt, which might be a source of wealth to the city, is not worked, only an ass-load or two at a time being brought in to supply the necessities of the market.