On the slopes of the hills are palaces and hunting seats of the Shah, beginning with the imposing mass of the Kasr-i-Kajār, on a low height, surrounded by majestic groves, in which are enormous tanks. Palaces and hunting seats of ministers and wealthy men succeed each other rapidly, a perfect seclusion having been obtained for each by the rapid growth of poplars and planes, each dwelling carrying out in its very marked individuality a deference to Persian custom, and each if possible using running water as a means of decoration. Many of these palaces are princely, and realise some of the descriptions in the Arabian Nights, with the beauty of their decorated architecture, the deep shade of their large demesnes, the cool plash of falling water, the songs of nightingales, and the scent of roses—sensuous Paradises in which the Persian finds the summer all too short.
Beyond this enchanting region, and much higher up on the mountain slopes, are the hunting grounds of the Shah and his sons, well stocked with game and rigidly preserved; for the Shah is a keen sportsman, and is said to prefer a free life under canvas and the pleasures of the chase to the splendid conventionalities of the Court of Tihran.
The two roads and the many tracks which centre in the capital after scoring the desert for many miles around it, are a feature of the landscape not to be overlooked, the Meshed, Resht, Bushire, and Tabriz roads being the most important, except the route from Baghdad by Kirmanshah and Hamadan, which in summer can be travelled by caravans in twenty-eight days, and by which many bulky articles of value, such as pianos, carriages, and valuable furniture, find their way to Tihran.[26]
These are some of the features of the environments of Tihran. A traveller writing ten years hence may probably have to tell that the city has extended to its walls, that Western influence is nearly dominant in externals, and possibly that the concessionaires who for years have been hanging about the Palace in alternations of hope and despondency have made something of their concessions, and that goods reach the capital in another way than on the backs of animals.
LETTER IX
British Legation, Tihran, March 18.
Three weeks have passed quickly by since that terrible ride from Husseinabad. The snow is vanishing from the Shimran hills, the spring has come, and I am about to leave the unbounded kindness and hospitality of this house on a long and difficult journey. It is very pleasant to go away carrying no memories but those of kindness, received not only from Europeans and Americans, but from Persians, including the Amin-es-Sultan and the Muschir-u-Dowleh.
It is impossible to bear away other than pleasant impressions of Tihran society. Kindness received personally always sways one's impressions of the people among whom one is thrown, and even if I had any unfavourable criticisms to make I should not make them.
Society, or rather I should say the European population, is divided into classes and knots. There are the eleven American missionaries, whose duties and interests lie apart from those of the rest of the community, the diplomatic body, which has a monopoly of political interests, the large staff of the Indo-European telegraph, married and single, with Colonel Wells at its head, and the mercantile class, in which the manager and employés of the Imperial Bank may be included. Outside of these recognised classes there is a shifting body of passing travellers, civil and military, and would-be concessionaires and adventurers, besides a few Europeans in Persian employment.