The horses, which are kept going at a canter so long as they can be thrashed into one, are small and active, and do wonders; but from the strain put upon them, bad feeding, sore backs, and general dilapidation and exhaustion, are constantly tumbling down. Several times I have seen wretched animals brought into the yards, apparently "dead beat," and after getting some chopped straw and a little barley thrashed into a canter again for twenty-five miles more, because the traveller could not get a remount. They often fall down dead under their riders, urged by the heavy chapar whip to the last.
Riding chapar, journeying in a taktrawan or litter, or in a kajaweh, or riding caravan pace, by which only about thirty miles a day can be covered, are the only modes of travelling in Persia, though I think that with capable assistance a carriage might make the journey from Tihran as far as Kashan.
I lodge in the chapar khanas whenever I can. They consist of mud walls fourteen feet high, enclosing yards deep in manure, with stabling for the chapar horses on two sides, and recesses in their inner walls for mangers. The entrance is an arched gateway. There are usually two dark rooms at the sides, which the servants occupy and cook in, and over the gateway is the balakhana, an abortive tower, attained by a steep and crumbling stair, in which I encamp. The one room has usually two doors, half-fitting and non-shutting, and perhaps a window space or two, and the ashes of the last traveller's fire.
Such a breezy rest just suits me, and when my camp furniture has been arranged and I am enjoying my "afternoon tea," I feel "monarch of all I survey," even of the boundless desert, over which the cloud shadows chase each other till it purples in the light of the sinking sun. If there is the desert desolation there is also the desert freedom.
The first halt was delicious after the crowds and fanaticism of Kûm. A broad plain with irrigated patches and a ruinous village was passed; then came the desert, an expanse of camel-brown gravel thickly strewn with stones, with a range of low serrated brown hills, with curious stratification, on the east. A few caravans of camels, and the haram of the Governor of Yezd in closely-covered kajawehs, alone broke the monotony. Before I thought we were half-way we reached the abambars, the small brown caravanserai, and the chapar khana of Passanghām, having ridden in three hours a distance on which I have often expended eight.
Cool and breezy it was in my room, and cooler and breezier on the flat mud roof; and the lifting of some clouds in the far distance to the north, beyond the great sweep of the brown desert, revealed the mighty Elburz range, white with new-fallen snow. At Sinsin the next evening it was gloriously cold. There had been another heavy snowfall, and in the evening the Elburz range, over a hundred miles away, rose in unsullied whiteness like a glittering wall, and above it the colossal cone of Demavend, rose-flushed.
The routine of the day is simple and easy. I get the caravan off at eight, lie on the floor for an hour, gallop and walk for about half the march, rest for an hour in some place, where Mahboud, the soldier, always contrives to bring me a glass of tea, and then gallop and walk to the halting-place, where I rest for another hour till the caravan comes in. I now know exactly what to pay, and by giving small presents get on very easily.
There were many uncomfortable prophecies about the annoyances and rudenesses which a lady travelling alone would meet with, but so far not one has been fulfilled. How completely under such circumstances one has to trust one's fellow-creatures! There are no fastenings on the doors of these breezy rooms, and last night there was only the longitudinal half of a door, but I fell asleep, fearing nothing worse than a predatory cat.
The last two days' marches have been chiefly over stony wastes, or among low hills of red earth, gray gravel, and brown mud, with low serrated ranges beyond, and farther yet high hills covered with snow, after which the road leaves the hills and descends upon a pink plain, much of the centre of which is snow-white from saline efflorescence. The villages Kasseinabad, Nasrabad, and Aliabad are passed on the plain, with small fruit trees and barley surrounding them, and great mud caravanserais at intervals, only remarkable for the number of camels lying outside of them in rows facing each other. In the fresh keen air of evening the cone of Demavend was painted in white on the faint blue sky, reddening into beauty as the purple-madder shadows deepened over the yellow desert.
Tea made with saltish water, and salt sheep's milk, have been the only drawbacks of the six days' march.