It was not long before two of the rebel chiefs at the head of a party of men arrived at the house of our traveller, demanding his merchandise, and informing him that the forty bales which he had despatched towards Meshed were already in their hands. They engaged, however, as soon as their government should be established, to pay for whatever they now seized upon, and only required, they said, a short credit. Hanway, like the ancient sophist, was thoroughly persuaded that there was no disputing with a man who commanded forty legions, and therefore, without vain opposition, suffered them to appropriate to themselves whatever they thought proper, excepting one hundred and sixty gold crowns, which he succeeded in concealing about his person. The Persians appeared exceedingly well satisfied when they had, as they supposed, gained possession of all his property; for they are well-bred thieves, who rob, as it were, with a kind of honorable regret and a humane sympathy for the sufferers; but their soldier-like allies, the Turcomans, looked upon the matter as merely begun, and casting a longing eye upon our traveller and his companions, as if they felt a strong inclination to eat them, observed to Zadoc, the rebel governor, “You give us the merchandise of the Russians—will you not give us the Russians also? They will do well to tend our sheep!”
Notwithstanding the disturbed state of public affairs, the breed of honest men had not become wholly extinct. Many inhabitants of Astrabad regretted to behold the distress of the stranger, and being desirous of placing him beyond the reach of the capricious insults of the rebels, not only gave him information, but aided, as far as possible, in enabling him to escape. While this design secretly occupied his mind, he obtained from one of the new chiefs a bill for the amount of his goods, and, upon further application, an engagement to provide ten armed men to escort him to Ghilān, in the vicinity of which Nadir Shah was said to be encamped with his army. The necessary precautionary measures being taken, he departed from Astrabad under convoy of hajjî, his brother, and two sons, with about twenty armed villagers. This holy man appeared to have discovered, during his pilgrimage to Mecca, the full value of earthly as well as of heavenly possessions, and thought that, while waiting for the latter, the being master of the former would be no inconvenience. He therefore exerted all his wits, which had no doubt been much sharpened by travelling, in the concoction of schemes for compelling Hanway to do an act of sublime charity, by reducing himself to destitution for the benefit of a pilgrim. Having it in his power to accelerate or impede, as he pleased, the movements of our traveller, he in a great measure succeeded; after which they continued their journey. The roads through northern Persia are at no time very safe, more particularly for an infidel: but now that the shah’s tyranny had goaded the wretched peasants into rebellion, the danger was infinitely augmented. Accordingly, the hajjî, who understood the character of his countrymen, conducted their little kafilah through pathless woods, over deep ravines and mountains, sedulously avoiding all frequented roads, and causing them to encamp at night in the open fields. During this journey they passed by the ruins of the palace of Ferhabad, once famous as the residence of the Persian kings.
Hanway’s conductors, understanding that Nadir’s general was levying forces at Balfroosh, the capital of Mazenderan, now expressed their determination to proceed no further; but observed that, as he was near the coast, he might perform the remaining distance by sea. “Accordingly, they conducted him and his attendants to a fisherman’s hut on the seacoast: the poor man had only an open boat, like a canoe, very leaky, and barely large enough to admit six persons; besides, it could be navigated only with oars or paddles near the shore, where the surf then ran very high; and the sandbanks, forming breakers, made the sea still more dangerous. He therefore again implored the carriers to furnish horses according to their engagement, but they treated his request with contempt. He threatened to use force; whereupon two of them, being armed with matchlocks, lighted their matches; two others had bows and arrows, and all of them, being six in number, had sabres. Hanway collected his company, among whom were four muskets, a blunderbuss, and a pair of pistols; but as he could not depend on more than two of his servants, after a short parley he submitted to run the risk of being drowned, rather than engage in a fray, where no other advantage could be gained than a precarious use of horses, through a country utterly unknown to him; and, if he should fall, the cause in which he embarked must fall with him.”
Embarking, therefore, in the fisherman’s canoe, they coasted along the shore to Teschidezar, where they landed. Hanway here applied for protection to the principal of the shah’s officers, who sent him a horse richly caparisoned for his own use, and four mules for his servants, with which he pushed on with all possible speed to Balfroosh. On his arrival at this city he was somewhat comforted by the assurance of the Persian merchants, that the shah would certainly make good his loss. But to reach the shah was the difficulty. No beasts, or any other mode of conveyance, could be obtained. The general, unable to oppose the rebels, was preparing for flight; and fortune appeared once more disposed to expose him to the danger of becoming a Turcoman shepherd. At length, however, the governor of the city munificently provided him with a horse, which, though “galled and spavined,” was still alive, and capable of conveying him several miles before he died. Upon this animal, therefore, miserable as he was, our traveller mounted; and, taking leave of all his attendants, with whom he left the rebels’ passport and what money he could spare, set out on his desperate journey alone. His departure was well timed, for the Turcomans were entering the city at the eastern gate, while he was escaping through the western one. “After some time,” says Pugh, “he fell in with a party who conducted the baggage of the admiral, and himself soon followed; but it was not possible for him to keep pace with them. The poor tartar boy, attached to him with more sincerity than his other servants, had followed him on foot; and when he fainted, Mr. Hanway took him up behind him; but before they had rode six miles, the horse’s hind quarters gave way, and they were both obliged to dismount.”
His situation was now deplorable. Knowing very little of the language, and without a guide, it was with extreme difficulty that he once more explored his way to the coast. His miserable appearance, for his clothes were worn out and in tatters, was his only protection. This excited the pity of the inhabitants; and when he arrived at any great river, he was, on pleading poverty, ferried over gratis; for he did not venture to show the money which he had concealed about his person at Astrabad. He at length overtook the troops of the person whom he calls the admiral, who was flying, like himself, before the Turcomans, and among whose followers he found his own clerk and servant. During this rapid flight he ate nothing for nearly forty hours excepting a few parched peas which he found by chance in his pocket. In the night the admiral decamped, intending to abandon Hanway to his fate; but the latter, rendered doubly energetic by despair, and highly incensed at his baseness, immediately followed at his heels. The night was dark and tempestuous; but, by pushing vigorously forward, he once more overtook the fugitive; and having by extraordinary exertions kept pace with him for some time, finding himself quite spent, and urged by despair, he seized the bridle of the horse on which the admiral was mounted, and in a loud, determined tone pronounced the word shah. The idea of Nadir brought thus suddenly to his mind seemed to have awakened the Persian from a dream. He halted, and, commanding his vizier to take up the traveller behind him, while another of the company had compassion on the poor Tartar boy, they again renewed their flight, which was continued without intermission from seven o’clock in the evening until next day, in the midst of continual tempest and rain.
Rapidly as they fled, however, rumour still kept up with them, and peopled all the woods and fastnesses around with Turcomans. A detachment of these ferocious soldiers were said to be posted in a wood in advance of the party; the admiral gave orders to fire upon them; and when Hanway came up to the spot he found five Afghan recruits, who had come so far on their way to join the shah’s army, weltering in their blood. They now, without at all relaxing in their movements, descended to the shore of the Caspian, which, broken and ploughed up alternately by mountain torrents and by the sea, was traversed with the utmost difficulty; while the surge at intervals dashed the horsemen from their steeds, and endangered their lives. At length, after a journey of twenty-three days, during which he had not enjoyed one hour of security or unbroken sleep, he arrived at Lanjaron, where he was most hospitably received and entertained by Captain Elton.
Here he remained several days, until, having slightly recovered his strength and refreshed his weary spirits, he departed for Reshed, where, in an interview with the governor, he learned that Nadir was shortly expected to be on the borders of Turkey. He therefore hired horses, provided his attendants with clothes, tents, firearms, and sabres, and set out in search of the shah. On the 2d of March he arrived, almost blind with the reflection of the snow, at Casbin, where he remained nine days, until the influence of spring, exceedingly rapid in those countries, began to dissolve the snow. He then joined a party of soldiers who were proceeding to the camp of the shah, who was reported to be marching upon Hamadan; and all the way as he went along he observed in the extreme distress of the inhabitants the terrible effects of Nadir’s tyranny. An air of silence and desolation prevailed over the whole country; for the people, taking them to be robbers or soldiers, which was the same thing, fled to the mountains, and left them to provide how they could for themselves.
On arriving at the shah’s camp, Hanway pitched his tent near the royal standard; and here, after having escaped so many perils by land and sea, he narrowly escaped perishing by a common accident. One of his muskets went off, and, discharging its contents in the roof of the tent over his head, set the canvass on fire. Without loss of time he presented his petition to the shah, praying to be reimbursed the value of the goods forcibly seized by the rebels at Astrabad; and while waiting for Nadir’s reply, enjoyed an ample opportunity, which he usefully turned to account, of observing the aspect and character of this motley, extraordinary scene. He saw the despot hemmed round by a circle of evils of his own creating, which was every moment narrowing, and threatening that terrible catastrophe which shortly afterward consummated the tyrant’s fate. Every heart was bursting with indignation, and curses were struggling to every tongue for vent, against the common enemy. And could he have looked into the heart of this imperial miscreant, he would there have beheld the vulture of which that of Typhœus was but the type and shadow, feeding upon apprehensions and horrors the most fearful and odious of all earthly things.
Externally, however, the monster appeared to be the beau idéal of imperial splendour. A harem of sixty women, selected for their resplendent beauty; palaces of barbaric grandeur; horses covered with trappings set with pearls, rubies, emeralds, and diamonds of prodigious size; and an army of two hundred thousand men, to maintain which his country had been ruined, and India despoiled, according to the most moderate computation, of one hundred and seventy millions sterling. Such was his condition. Not long after his arrival Hanway obtained a decree of the shah “that the particulars of his loss should be delivered to Behbud Khan, the shah’s general, now at Astrabad, who was to return such parts of the goods as could be recovered, and make up the deficiency out of the sequestered estates of the rebels.”
Having obtained this decree, with which, as it took him back to Astrabad, he was not altogether satisfied, Hanway quitted the camp of Nadir on the 27th of March. The spring in those southern regions being already advanced, the bright pure blue of the sky, “the falls of water from the rocks, the stupendous mountains, far higher than any he had seen in Europe, rising gradually one above another, some with their summits covered with snow, and others concealing their heads in the clouds, formed a delightful scene. The vines were full of foliage, the orange groves perfumed the air with their fragrance, and the gardens were in full blossom.” The beauty of the landscape, however, was almost entirely the work of nature; for the husbandman, not knowing who might reap the fruits of his industry, had ceased to cultivate the earth, or cultivated it with a sparing and unwilling hand. The curse of despotism, the bane of genius and energy, submission to which is the severest evil humanity can suffer, was deeply felt throughout the land, where, however, symptoms of a most salutary and just revenge, the sacred duty of the oppressed, were beginning to manifest themselves in a very striking manner.