The climate of Teheran is variable, in consequence of its situation at the foot of high mountains, which on the other side are backed by such a sea as the Caspian. For the earlier part of our stay it was moderate; till the 10th of March the thermometer, which was suspended near an open window in a room unexposed to the sun, was at 51° Fahrenheit. On the 10th, throughout the whole day, there was much snow; indeed on the following morning, when the thermometer was at 47°, the heat of the sun produced a partial thaw, which was succeeded by a frost so sharp, that before the close of the day, an officer of the suite, who weighed fourteen stone, was able to walk and slide upon a square reservoir before the Dewan Khonéh, even though the surface had been already broken at one corner. The fall of snow was a seasonable supply of moisture to the country, which had long been without any. On the new moon of March (the 15th of the month) the rain begun, and for some days continued regularly, clearing up about four or five hours before sun-set, and gathering again at night. From the height of the walls which surrounded us, and the want of weathercocks or chimnies, I could collect but imperfectly the quarter of the wind; but, as far as I could judge, it was generally from the S. E. There is a wind sometimes rushing from the Albores on the N. of the bleakness of which the natives speak with dread. From the 23d March (the first quarter of the moon) we had the true ethereal mildness of spring, with light breezes from the westward in the evening. Vegetation was making rapid advances: the rose-trees in the court of our house were already green, and the chenars had just begun to bud. The snow on the Albores was diminishing fast; and the weather generally, which sometimes lowered and then brightened up, was that of an English spring. The thermometer was about 61° to 64°, but in the middle of the day it reached 75°, and the heat in the close streets of the town was very sensible. In the first week of April the mornings were beautiful; but about noon a hot wind set in from the S. E. which increased towards the evening, and died away at night. About the second week the weather became cooler. Every thing was in high foliage, and all our horses were at grass. The heat was then becoming great: on the 19th the thermometer was at 82° in the shade, and at night we had thunder and lightning with a thick haze over the Albores. On the 21st the temperature, which in the interval had been at 86°, sunk to 67°. On the night of the 20th there had been a storm; and on the dawn of day we discovered that the Albores, which before had lost their snow, were again covered. These transitions are common to situations like that of Teheran. The rain refreshed the air, and gave strength to the grass, which in the more immediate neighbourhood of the town requires much moisture to enable it to pierce the hardness of the soil. From this time the days continued cool, with rain and frequent storms; and the evenings became almost piercing; but the showers gave a new force to vegetation.
Teheran is considered an unwholesome situation. The town is low and built on a salt, moist soil. In the summer the heats are said to be so insufferable, that all those who are able (all perhaps except a few old women) quit the town and live in tents nearer the foot of the Albores, where it is comparatively cool. We had several illnesses in our family, which we attributed to the water. The symptoms were an obstinate constipation with great gripings, a disorder very common in the place. Our head Persian writer was long laid up with a fever, which brought him to the point of death. He was bled copiously six times in six days. These people put no faith in our medicines, and therefore he would not allow the Physician of the Mission to visit him. At length however he was persuaded by a “fall” which he took in Hafiz, and which pointed out, that he should “trust in the stranger.” The superstitious faith with which the Persians observe these falls is inconceivable: the oracle consists in taking the book of Hafiz, wherever it may chance to open, and reading the passage on which the eyes first happen to alight. That, by which the attention is thus attracted, is the prediction. Before they open the book, they make certain invocations to God. Dr. Jukes accordingly prescribed; but his patient I believe disregarded his advice; and we were despairing about him, when we were told that the King’s physician had been with him, and had given him a water-melon to eat, and that the sick man was now recovering. The theory of Persian medicine is somewhat that of Galen: they attribute all sickness to one of two causes, heat or cold. If the patient is supposed to suffer from much heat, they bleed him beyond measure; if from cold, they give him cathartics in the same proportion.
In the belief of Persia there is another and a simpler remedy for malady. Nor perhaps is the credulity confined to Persia: there is I suspect a more general superstition, that to relieve disease or accident, the patient has only to deposit a rag on certain bushes, and from the same spot to take another which has been previously left from the same motive by a former sufferer.
In the time of the Seffis there was also another superstition in Persia, which perhaps is not wholly extinct at this day. Every one who has read Chardin, will remember the history of the coronation of Shah Suleyman, who, because his original name was considered unlucky, was renamed and recrowned.
The fruits which were in season at Teheran in the month of March, and which were served to us every day at dinner, were pomegranates, apples, pears, melons, limes, and oranges. The pomegranates came from Mazanderan, and were really here a luscious fruit, much superior to any that I have seen in Turkey. They were generally twelve inches in circumference. The vegetables were carrots, turnips, spinach and beet-root. Hives are kept all over the country, and we had at Teheran the finest honey that I ever ate, though that of Shiraz is reckoned better, and that of Kauzeroon (which the bees cull from the orange-groves) is considered as still superior. Our mutton was excellent, and very cheap; for a sheep costs two piastres only. The beef was sometimes good; but as their meat is not deemed desirable in Persia, oxen are not kept or fattened for the purposes of the table. We eat a hare which had been caught by a man in the plain, and which we afterwards coursed with our greyhounds. The Persians regard this flesh as unclean in opposition to the Turks, who eat it without scruple.
In April we got delicious herrings from the Caspian, which appears the proper sea for them. They are much larger than those which we have on the English coasts, and are called by the Persians the shah mahee, “king of fishes.” In the end of that month we received a fresh salmon of twenty-five pounds from the same sea also, as a present from the Ameen-ed-Doulah. The Persians call it kizzel or golden: it was to the palate as good as any English salmon, though with some of us it did not agree quite so well.
From the account which the Prime Minister gave us of a stone which is burnt in Mazanderan, there must be coals of the finest kind in that province. Among the products of Persia are gum tragacanth, assafœtida, yellow berries, henna (coarser than that of Egypt,) madder roots, which grow wild upon the mountains, and are brought down for sale by the Eelauts or wandering tribes; the Hindoos only export it as returns. Indigo is cultivated for the dying of linen and of beards, and grows about Shooster Desfoul, near Kherat, and in the Laristan. It is not so fine as the indigo from India, which indeed is a great article of the import trade of Persia. They use the leaf only for their beards. There is no cochineal. Cotton is produced enough for the interior consumption of the country. The best manufacture which they make is a cotton cloth, called the kaduck; of this there is an exportation to Turkey. The finest is manufactured at Ispahan. The great and richest produce is the silk of Ghilan and Mazanderan. The manufacturing towns of Persia are Yezd, silken stuffs, stuffs of silk and cotton; Kashan, silks and copper ware; Koom, earthenware; Resht, silks, coarse woollen cloths of which the tekmis are made; Shiraz, swords, fire-arms, and glass-ware; Ispahan, brocades, cotton clothes; Kermanshah, arms; Kerman, shawls.
4th of May. The most beautiful part of the plain about Teheran is that to the S. E. The verdure, when I left the country, was most luxuriant; and the whole animated by peasantry and their cattle. Yet though the spring was thus far advanced, the mountain Demawend (whenever the clouds, which almost always concealed it, rolled away) appeared more than ever covered with snow. The direct distance to it from Teheran is about forty miles; to the base of the first mountain is reckoned fourteen miles. We had seen it when it was at least one hundred and fifty miles from us; and were told indeed, as I have remarked before, that it might be seen from the top of the minaret of the Mesjid Shah, at Ispahan, a distance of two hundred and forty miles. It is visible from Resht, and generally along all the south of the Caspian sea; and it is therefore very credible that that sea, which is not more than forty miles from the base, may be seen from the summit, of Demawend. But, according to some accounts, no one ever gained the top; according to others, there is a horse-road through the whole ascent. I was told at Tabriz, by a man of Mazanderan, that he himself knew several who had reached the summit; and, indeed, that Derveishes, led by the information of their books, resorted thither from India to cull a certain plant convertible into gold, and tinging with a golden hue the teeth of the sheep that feed upon the mountain. At the foot of the Albores are many villages and pleasure-houses, and much cultivation; all the rest of the country in that direction is a blank with scarcely a shrub.
On the east side of the plain of Teheran there is an elevated road of a fine bottom running N. and S. which seems to have been connected with the city of Rey. On the 4th of March we visited the ruins of Rey. They are situated about five miles in a south direction from Teheran, and extend as far as the eye can reach over the plain, E. and W. To the E. at the foot of a projecting range, which branches from the Albores, are the remains of the citadel; consisting of walls and turrets, built of mud bricks, which in most places are distinguished with difficulty from mounds of earth. The mass of the height, on which it is erected, seems rather of earth than of rock. Near the foot of the citadel stands a tower, which by our hasty calculation may be about fifty feet in height. It is built of a very fine species of brick, cemented by mortar. Its exterior is arranged in twenty-four triangular compartments, the base of each being about five feet, giving a circumference of one hundred and twenty feet. On the summit, between two rows of ornaments in brick, is an inscription in the Cuffick character; the letters of which are formed by small inlaid bricks. The interior was so full of straw and other rubbish, that we could not explore it; the door is to the eastward. The style of building resembles much that of the Seffis; with this difference, that the bricks are put together with a greater portion of mortar, and are of a rather darker colour. About three miles to the Southward on an insulated hill are other buildings, and a turret of the same style as the one just described; and between both is a round tower of stone, with a Cuffick inscription in brick-work. In this turret we observed through a window, that there was a winding staircase in the wall, but we could not find the entrance to it.
Still further on, on the brow of a hill close under the mountain, is a building, partly of ancient and partly of modern construction; this is the tomb of one of the wives of Imaum Hossein. It is composed of two courts and two inner rooms; three old women officiate here over the remains of their female saint. There is much running water all around; part issues from a spring, which gushes out from under a rock. The mountains are arid, with surfaces indicating much mineral below.