Twenty years ago I myself had a little adventure with jackals. I was riding with a couple of servants and some horses to the Caspian shore from the interior of Persia, and encamped one evening at a village in the Elburz Mountains. The caravanserai was notorious for its vermin, so I preferred to make myself comfortable in a garden with fruit trees and poplars, protected by a wall five feet high and without any gates. We had to climb over the wall in order to get in. I had a saddle for a pillow and lay wrapped in a felt rug and a cloak. The remains of my supper, bread, honey, and apples, stood on my two small leather trunks. When it grew dark my men went off to the village and I rolled myself up and went to sleep.
Two hours later I was awakened by a scratching noise at the trunks and sat up to listen, but could hear nothing but the murmur of a small brook close at hand. The darkness was intense, only a little starlight passing faintly through the foliage. So I went to sleep again. A little later I was roused once more by the same noise, and heard a tearing and tugging at the straps. Then I jumped up and distinguished half a dozen jackals disappearing like shadows among the poplars. There was no more sleep for me that night. It was all I could do to keep the importunate beasts at a distance. If I kept quiet for a minute they were up again, tearing the leathern straps, and would not make off until I struck a box with my riding whip. They soon became accustomed even to this and drew back only a few steps. Then I remembered the apples, and as soon as the jackals crept up again, I threw one of them with all my strength into the ruck, and used them as missiles till the last apple had disappeared into the darkness. Most of my shots were misses, for I only once heard a howl from one of the impudent animals.
The night seemed endless, but at length the day dawned between the poplars, and the jackals jumped quietly over the wall. Then I should have liked some breakfast, but there was not a bit of the supper left; the jackals had taken it all. However, I had a sound sleep instead. I heard afterwards that the jackals in that country are so vicious that two or three of them will attack a man, so in future I always had my servants sleeping near me.
While speaking of jackals we must not forget the hyæna, for this animal is one of the denizens of the desert, though it is of another genus. The hyæna is a singular animal, neither dog nor cat, but a mixture of both and larger than either. It is of a dirty greyish-brown colour with black stripes or patches, has a rounded head with black muzzle and eyes, and short hind legs, so that the bristly back slopes downwards. It prowls about for food at night, and in western Persia comes down from its hiding-places in the mountains to the caravan roads in quest of fallen asses, horses and camels. If corpses are not buried deep enough it scratches them up from beneath the tombstones, for it lives almost exclusively on dead and corrupted flesh.
Thus the four-footed inhabitants of the desert prowl around the outskirts of Tebbes and share the country with panthers, wild asses and graceful elegant gazelles. Tebbes itself lies lonely and forgotten like an island in the ocean.
The principal caravan road connecting the oasis with the outer world runs north-eastwards to the holy town of Meshed, whither many pilgrims flock. From Meshed it is only a few days' journey through a mountainous tract to the frontier between Persia and Russian Asia. There lie Transcaspia, Samarcand, Bukhara, Turkestan, and the Kirghiz Steppe. This road would take us out of our way to India, but while we halt at Tebbes I can tell you something about the country it passes through.