This celebrated port, from which insufferable heat and a pestilential atmosphere banish the whole population during summer, is at all times excessively insalubrious, all strangers who settle there dying in the course of a few years, and the inhabitants themselves being already old at thirty. The few persons who remain to keep guard over the city during summer, at the risk of their lives, are relieved every ten days; during which they suffer sufficiently from the heat, the deluges of rain, and the black and furious tempests which plough up the waters of the gulf, and blow with irresistible fury along the coast.
Though the eve of the season of death was drawing near, Chardin found the inhabitants of Bander in a gay humour, feasting, drinking, and elevating their sentiments and rejoicing their hearts with the heroic songs of Firdoosi. Into these amusements our traveller entered with all his heart—the time flew by rapidly—the advent of fever and death was come—and the ship which he expected from Surat had not yet arrived. Talents and experience are not always accompanied by prudence. Chardin saw the whole population deserting the city; yet he lingered, detained by the auri sacra fames, until far in the month of May, and until, in fact, the seeds of a malignant fever had been sown in his constitution. Those uneasy sensations which are generally the forerunners of sickness and death, united with the representations of the physicians, at length induced him to quit the place, his attendants being already ill; but he had not proceeded many leagues before a giddiness in the head and general debility of body informed him that he had remained somewhat too long at Bander.
Arriving on the 24th of May at Tangnedelan, a place where there was not a single human being to be found, he became delirious, and at last fell into a fit from which his attendants had much difficulty in recovering him. There happened, by great good fortune, to be a French surgeon in his suite. This surgeon, who was an able man in his profession, not only took all possible care of our traveller during his moments of delirium, but, what was of infinitely greater importance, had the good sense to hurry his departure from those deserted and fatal regions, procuring from the neighbouring villages eight men, who carried him in a litter made with canes and branches of trees to Lâr. As soon as they had reached this city, Chardin sent for the governor’s physician, who, understanding that he was the shah’s merchant, came to him immediately. Our traveller was by this time so weak that he could scarcely describe his feelings; and, as well as the French surgeon, began to believe that his life was near its close. The Persian Esculapius, however, who discovered the nature of the disorder at a glance, assured him it was a mere trifle; that he needed by no means be uneasy; and that, in fact, he would, with God’s blessing, restore him to health that very day, nay, in a very few hours.
This dashing mode of dealing with disorders produced an excellent effect upon the traveller’s mind. The hakīm seemed to hold Death by the beard, to keep him in his toils, to curb him, or let him have his way at pleasure. Chardin’s whole frame trembled with joy. He took the physician by the hand, squeezed it as well as his strength would permit, and looked up in his face as he would have looked upon his guardian-angel. The hakīm, to whom these things were no novelties, proceeded, without question or remark, to prescribe for his patient; and having done this, he was about to retire, when the traveller cried out, “Sir, I am consumed with heat!”—“I know that very well,” replied the hakīm; “but you shall be cooled presently!” and with the word both he and his apothecary disappeared.
About nine o’clock the young apothecary returned, bringing with him a basketful of drugs, enough, to all appearance, to kill or cure a regiment of patients. “For whom,” inquired Chardin, “are all those medicines?”—“For you,” replied the young man; “these are what the hakīm has ordered you to take this morning, and you must swallow them as quickly as possible.” Fevers make men docile. The traveller immediately began to do as he was commanded; but when he came to one of the large bottles, his “gorge,” as Shakspeare phrases it, began to rise at it, and he observed that it would be impossible to swallow that at a draught. “Never mind,” said the young man, “you can take it at several draughts.” Obedience followed, and the basketful of physic disappeared. “You will presently,” observed the apothecary, “experience the most furious thirst; and I would willingly give you ices to take, but there is neither ice nor snow in the city except at the governor’s.” As his thirst would not allow him to be punctilious, Chardin at once applied to the governor; and succeeding in his enterprise, quenched his burning thirst with the most delicious drinks in the world.
To render him as cool as possible his bed was spread upon the floor in an open parlour, and so frequently sprinkled with water that the room might almost be said to be flooded; but the fever still continuing, the bed was exchanged for a mat, upon which he was extended in his shirt, and fanned by two men. The disorder being still unsubdued, the patient was placed upon a chair, where cold water was poured over him in profusion, while the French surgeon, who was constantly by his side, and could not restrain his indignation at seeing the ordinary rules of his practice thus set at naught, exclaimed, “They are killing you, sir! Depend upon it, that it is by killing you the hakīm means to remove your fever!” The traveller, however, maintained his confidence in the Persian, and had very soon the satisfaction of being informed that the fever had already abated, and of perceiving that, instead of killing, the hakīm had actually cured him. In one word, the disorder departed more rapidly than it had come on, and in a few days he was enabled to continue his journey.
Remaining quietly at Ispahan during the space of a whole year after this unfortunate excursion, he then departed from the capital for the court, which still lingered at Casbin, in company with Mohammed Hussein Beg, son of the governor of the island of Bahreint. This young man was conducting from his father to the king a present, consisting of two wild bulls, with long, black, sharp horns, an ostrich, and a number of rich Indian stuffs; and being by no means a strict Mussulman, drinking wine and eating heartily of a good dinner, whether cooked by Mohammedan or Christian, was a very excellent travelling companion. On his arrival at Casbin, Chardin, who was now extremely well known to all the grandees of the kingdom, was agreeably and hospitably received by the courtiers, particularly by the wife of the grand pontiff, who was the king’s aunt. This lady, in order to manifest the friendship she entertained for him, though in consequence of the peculiar manners of the country their souls only had met, made him a present of eight chests of dried sweetmeats, scented with amber and the richest perfumes of the East. Her husband was no less distinguished by his friendship for our traveller, who nowhere in Persia experienced more genuine kindness or generosity than from this noble family.
During this visit to Casbin, Chardin had the honour, as it is vulgarly termed, of presenting two of his countrymen to the shah; and so powerful is the force of habit and prejudice, that this able, learned, and virtuous man really imagined it an honour to approach and converse familiarly with an opium-eating, cruel, and unprincipled sot, merely because he wore a tiara and could sport with the destinies of a great empire! The nazir, in introducing the traveller, observed, “Sire, this is Chardin, your merchant.” To which the shah replied, with a smile, “He is a very dear merchant.”—“Your majesty is right,” added the nazir; “he is a politic man; he has overreached the whole court.” This the minister uttered with a smile; and he had a right to smile, says Chardin, for he took especial care that quite the contrary should happen.
Chardin soon after this took his final leave of the court of Persia, and returned by way of Ispahan to Bander-Abassi, whence he purposed sailing by an English ship for Surat. The fear of falling into the hands of the Dutch, then at war with France, prevented him, however, from putting his design into execution; and relinquishing the idea of again visiting Hindostan, he returned to Europe in 1677. Of the latter part of his life few particulars are known. Prevented by religious considerations from residing in his own country, where freedom of conscience was not to be enjoyed, he selected England for his home, where, in all probability, he became acquainted with many of the illustrious men who shed a glory over that epoch of our history. It was in London, also, that he first met with the lady whom he immediately afterward made his wife. Like himself, she was a native of France and a Protestant, forced into banishment by the apprehension of religious persecution. On the very day of his marriage Chardin received the honour of knighthood from the hand of the gay and profligate Charles II.
Having now recovered from the fever of travelling, the beautiful Rouennaise in all probability aiding in the cure, Chardin devoted his leisure to the composition of his “Travels’ History,” of which the first volume appeared in London in 1686. While he was employed in preparing the remainder of his works for the press, he was appointed the king’s minister plenipotentiary or ambassador to the States of Holland, being at the same time intrusted with the management of the East India Company’s affairs in that country. His public duties, however, which could not entirely occupy his mind, by no means prevented, though they considerably delayed, the publication of the remainder of his travels; the whole of which appeared, both in quarto and duodecimo, in 1711. Shortly after this he returned to England, where he died in the neighbourhood of London, 1713, in the sixty-ninth year of his age.