Shortly after passing him a turn among the hills brought the revelation through snow clouds of the magnificent snow-covered chain of the Elburz mountains, with the huge cone of Demavend, their monarch, 18,600 feet[23] in height, towering high above them, gleaming sunlit above the lower cloud-masses. Swampy water-courses, a fordable river crossed by a broad bridge of five arches, more low hills, more rolling desert, then a plain of mud irrigated for cultivation, difficult ground for the horses, the ruins of a deserted village important enough to have possessed two imamzadas, and then we reached the Husseinabad, which has very good guest-rooms, with mirrors on the walls.
This caravanserai is only one march from Tihran, and it seemed as if all difficulties were over. Abbas Khan and the sick orderly were sent on early, with a baggage mule loaded with evening dress and other necessities of civilisation; the caravan was to follow at leisure, and M—— and I started at ten, without attendants, expecting to reach Tihran early in the afternoon.
It is six days since that terrible ride of ten hours and a half, and my bones ache as I recall it. I never wish to mount a horse again. It had been a very cold night, and for some time after we started it was doubtful whether snow or rain would gain the day, but after an hour of wet snow it decided on rain, and there was a steady downpour all day. The Elburz range, which the day before had looked so magnificent when fifty miles off, was blotted out. This was a great disappointment.
An ascent of low, blackish volcanic hills is made by a broad road of gray gravel, which a torrent has at some time frequented. Thorns and thistles grow there, and skeletons of animals abound. Everything is grim and gray. From these hills we descended into the Kavir, a rolling expanse of friable soil, stoneless, strongly impregnated with salt, but only needing sufficient water to wash the salt out of it and to irrigate it to become as prolific as it is now barren.
It is now a sea of mud crossed by a broad road indicated by dykes, that never-to-be-forgotten mud growing deeper as the day wore on. Hour after hour we plunged through it, sometimes trying the road, and on finding it impassable scrambling through the ditches and over the dykes to the plain, which after offering firmer foothold for a time became such a "slough of despond" that we had to scramble back to the road, and so on, hour after hour, meeting nothing but one ghastly caravan of corpses, and wretched asses falling in the mud.
At mid-day, scrambling up a gravel hill with a little wormwood upon it, and turning my back to the heavy rain, I ate a lunch of dates and ginger, insufficient sustenance for such fatigue. On again!—the rain pouring, the mud deepening, my spine in severe pain. We turned off to a caravanserai, mostly a heap of ruins, the roofs having given way under the weight of the snow, and there I sought some relief from pain by lying down for the short thirty minutes which could be spared in the seraidar's damp room. It was then growing late in the afternoon, all landmarks had disappeared in a brooding mist, there were no habitations, and no human beings of whom to ask the way.
The pain returned severely as soon as I mounted, and increased till it became hardly bearable. Ceaseless mud, ceaseless heavy rain, a plain of mud, no refuge from mud and water, attempts to gallop were made with the risk of the horses falling into holes and even kanaats. M—— rode in front. Not a word was spoken. A gleaming dome, with minarets and wood, appeared below the Shimran hills. Unluckily, where two roads met one looked impassable and we took the other, which, though it eventually took us to Tihran, was a détour of some miles.
In the evening, when I was hoping that Tihran was at hand, we reached the town of Shah Abdul Azim, built among the ruins of an ancient city, either Rhages or Rhei. The gilded dome is the shrine of Abdul Azim, and is a great place of pilgrimage of the picnic order from Tihran. The one railroad of Persia runs from the capital to this town. As we floundered in darkness along wide roads planted with trees, there was the incongruity of a railway whistle, and with deep breathing and much glare an engine with some carriages passed near the road, taking away with its harsh Western noises that glorious freedom of the desert which outweighs all the hardship even of a winter journey.
It was several miles from thence to the gate of Tihran. It was nearly pitch dark when we got out of Abdul Azim and the rain still fell heavily. In that thick rainy darkness no houses were visible, even if they exist, there were no passengers on foot or on horseback, it was a "darkness which might be felt."