There are no nymphs nor naiads here now, nothing but the smoothly-worn marble shute to tell the tale of the merry past; but we obtain a realistic idea of their sportive games by taking the bulldogs to the upper chamber, and giving them a start down the slide. As they clutch and claw, and look scared, and appeal mutely for assistance, only to slide gradually down, down, down, and fall with a splash into the tank at last, we have only to imagine the bull-dogs transformed into Fatteh-ali Shah's naiads, to learn something of the truth of current stories. After we have slid the dogs down a few times, and they begin to realize that they are not sliding hopelessly down to destruction, they enjoy the sport as much as we, or as much as the naiads perhaps did a hundred years ago. That portion of the Teheran bazaar immediately behind the Shah's winter palace, is visited almost daily by Europeans, and their presence excites little comment or attention from the natives; but I had frequently heard the remark that a Ferenghi couldn't walk through the southern, or more exclusive native quarters, without being insulted. Determined to investigate, I sallied forth one afternoon alone, entering the bazaar on the east side of the palace wall, where I had entered it a dozen times before.
The streets outside are sloppy with melting snow, and the roofed passages of the bazaar, being dry underfoot, are crowded with people to an unusual extent; albeit they are pretty well crowded at any time. Most of the dervishes in the city have been driven, by the inclemency of the weather, to seek shelter in the bazaar; these, added to the no small number who make the place their regular foraging ground, render them a greater nuisance than ever. They are encountered in such numbers, that no matter which way I turn, I am confronted by a rag-bedecked mendicant, with a wild, haggard countenance and grotesque costume, thrusting out his gourd alms-receiver, and muttering "huk yah huk!" each in his own peculiar way. The mollahs, with their flowing robes, and huge white turbans, likewise form no inconsiderable proportion of the moving throng; they are almost without exception scrupulously neat and clean in appearance, and their priestly costume and Pharisaical deportment gives them a certain air of stateliness. They wear the placid expression of men so utterly puffed up with the notion of their own sanctity, that their self-consciousness verily scorns to shine through their skins, and to impart to them a sleek, oily appearance. One finds himself involuntarily speculating on how they all manage to make a living; the mollah "toils not, neither does he spin," and almost every other person one meets is a mollah.
The bazaar is a common thoroughfare for anything and everything that can make its way through. Donkey-riders, horsemen, and long strings of camels and pack-mules add their disturbing influence to the general confusion; and although hundreds of stalls are heaped up with every merchantable thing in the city, scores of donkeys laden with similar products are meandering about among the crowd, the venders shouting their wares with lusty lungs. In many places the din is quite deafening, and the odors anything but agreeable to European nostrils; but the natives are not over fastidious. The steam issuing from the cook-shops, from coppers of soup, pillau and sheeps'-trotters, and the less objectionable odors from places where busy men are roasting bazaar-kabobs for hungry customers all day long, mingle with the aromatic contributions from the spice and tobacco shops wedged in between them.
The sleek-looking spice merchant, squatting contentedly beside a pan of glowing embers, smoking kalian after kalian in dreamy contemplation of his assistant waiting on customers, and also occasionally waiting on him to the extent of replenishing the fire on the kalian, is undoubtedly the happiest of mortals. With a kabob-shop on one hand, a sheeps'-trotter-shop on the other, and a bakery and a fruit-stand opposite, he indulges in tid-bits from either when he is hungry. With nothing to do but smoke kalians amid the fragrant aroma of his own spices, and keep a dreamy eye on what passes on around him, his Persian notions of a desirable life cause him to regard himself as blest beyond comparison with those whose avocations necessitate physical exertion. All the shops are open front places, like small fruit and cigar stands in an American city, the goods being arranged on boards or shelving, sloping down to the front, or otherwise exposed to the best advantage, according to the nature of the wares; the shops have no windows, but are protected at night by wooden shutters. The piping notes of the flute, or the sing-song voice of the troubadour or story-teller is heard behind the screened entrance of the tchai-khans, and now and then one happens across groups of angry men quarrelling violently over some trifling difference in a bargain; noise and confusion everywhere reign supreme. Here the road is blocked up by a crowd of idlers watching a trio of lutis, or buffoons, jerking a careless and indifferent-looking baboon about with a chain to make him dance; and a little farther along is another crowd surveying some more lutis with a small brown bear. Both the baboon and the bear look better fed than their owners, the contributions of the onlookers consisting chiefly of eatables, bestowed upon the animals for the purpose of seeing them feed. Half a mile, or thereabouts, from the entrance, an inferior quarter of the bazaar is reached; the crowds are less dense, the noise is not near so deafening, and the character of the shops undergoes a change for the worse. A good many of the shops are untenanted, and a good many others are occupied by artisans manufacturing the ruder articles of commerce, such as horseshoes, pack-saddles, and the trappings of camels. Such articles as kalians, che-bouks and other pipes, geivehs, slippers and leather shoes, hats, jewelry, etc., are generally manufactured on the premises in the better portions of the bazaar, where they are sold. Perched in among the rude cells of industry are cook-shops and tea-drinking establishments of an inferior grade; and the occupants of these places eye me curiously, and call one another's attention to the unusual circumstance of a Ferenghi passing through their quarter. After half a mile of this, my progress is abruptly terminated by a high mud wall, with a narrow passage leading to the right. I am now at the southern extremity of the bazaar, and turn to retrace my footsteps. So far I have encountered no particular disposition to insult anybody; only a little additional rudeness and simple inquisitive-ness, such as might very naturally have been expected. But ere I have retraced my way three hundred yards, I meet a couple of rowdyish young men of the charuadar class; no sooner have I passed them than one of them wantonly delivers himself of the promised insult - a peculiar noise with the mouth; they both start off at a run as though expecting to be pursued and punished. As I turn partially round to look, an old pomegranate vender stops his donkey, and with a broad grin of amusement motions me to give chase. When nearing the more respectable quarter again, I stroll up one of the numerous ramifications leading toward what looks, like a particularly rough and dingy quarter. Before going many steps I am halted by a friendly-faced sugar merchant, with "Sahib," and sundry significant shakes of the head, signifying, if he were me, he wouldn't go up there. And thus it is in the Teheran bazaar; where a Ferenghi will get insulted once, he will find a dozen ready to interpose with friendly officiousness between him and anything likely to lead to unpleasant consequences. On the whole, a European fares better than a Persian in his national costume would in an Occidental city, in spite of the difference between our excellent police regulations and next to no regulations at all; he fares better than a Chinaman does in New York. The Teheran bazaar, though nothing to compare to the world-famous bazaar at Stamboul, is wonderfully extensive. I was under the impression that I had been pretty much all through it at different times; but a few days after my visit to the "slummy " quarters, I follow a party of corpse-bearers down a passage-way hitherto unexplored, to try and be present at a Persian funeral, and they led the way past at least a mile of shops I had never yet seen. I followed the corpse-bearers through the dark passages and narrow alley-ways of the poorer native quarter, and in spite of the lowering brows of the followers, penetrated even into the house where they washed the corpses before burial; but here the officiating mollahs scowled with such unmistakable displeasure, and refused to proceed in my presence, so that I am forced to beat a retreat. The poorer native quarter of Teheran is a shapeless jumble of mud dwellings, and ruins of the same; the streets are narrow passages describing all manner of crooks and angles in and out among them. As I emerge from the vaulted bazaar the sun is almost setting, and the musicians in the bala-khanas of the palace gates are ushering in the close of another day with discordant blasts from ancient Persian trumpets, and belaboring hemispherical kettle- drums. These musicians are dressed in fantastic scarlet uniforms, not unlike the costume of a fifteen century jester, and every evening at sundown they repair to these balakhanas, and for the space of an hour dispense the most unearthly music imaginable. tubes of brass about five feet long, which respond to the efforts of a strong-winded person, with a diabolical basso-profundo shriek that puts a Newfoundland fog-horn entirely in the shade. When a dozen of these instruments are in full blast, without any attempt at harmony, it seems to shed a depressing shadow of barbarism over the whole city. This sunset music is, I think, a relic of very old times, and it jars on the nerves like the despairing howl of ancient Persia, protesting against the innovation from the pomp and din and glamour of her old pagan glories, to the present miserable era of mollah rule and feeble dependence for national existence on the forbearance or jealousy of other nations. Beneath the musicians' gate, and I emerge into a small square which is half taken up by a square tank of water; near the tank is a large bronze cannon. It is a huge, unwieldy piece, and a muzzle-loader, utterly useless to such a people as the Persians, except for ornament, or perhaps to help impress the masses with an idea of the Shah's unapproachable greatness.
It is the special hour of prayer, and in every direction may be observed men, halting in whatever they may be doing, and kneeling down on some outer garment taken off for the purpose, repeatedly touch their foreheads to the ground, bending in the direction of Mecca. Passing beneath the second musicians' gate, I reach the artillery square just in time to see a company of army buglers formed in line at one end, and a company of musketeers at the other. As these more modern trumpeters proceed to toot, the company of musketeers opposite present arms, and then the music of the new buglers, and the hoarse, fog-horn-like blasts of the fantastic tooters on the bala-khanas dies away together in a concerted effort that would do credit to a troop of wild elephants.
When the noisy trumpeting ceases, the ordinary noises round about seem like solemn silence in comparison, and above this comparative silence can be heard the voices of men here and there over the city, calling out "Al-lah-il-All-ah; Ali Ak-bar." (God is greatest; there is no god but one God! etc.) with stentorian voices. The men are perched on the roofs of the mosques, and on noblemen's walls and houses; the Shah has a strong- voiced muezzin that can be heard above all the others. The sun has just set; I can see the snowy cone of Mount Demavend, peeping apparently over the high barrack walls; it has just taken on a distinctive roseate tint, as it oftentimes does at sunset; the reason whereof becomes at once apparent upon turning toward the west, for the whole western sky is aglow with a gorgeous sunset-a sunset that paints the horizon a blood red, and spreads a warm, rich glow over half the heavens.
The moon will be full to-night, and a far lovelier picture even than the glorious sunset and the rose-tinted mountain, awaits anyone curious enough to come out-doors and look. The Persian moonlight seems capable of surrounding the most commonplace objects with a halo of beauty, and of blending things that are nothing in themselves, into scenes of such transcendental loveliness that the mere casual contemplation of them sends a thrill of pleasure coursing through the system. There is no city of the same size (180,000) in England or America, but can boast of buildings infinitely superior to anything in Teheran; what trees there are in and about the city are nothing compared to what we are used to having about us; and although the gates with their short minars and their gaudy facings are certainly unique, they suffer greatly from a close investigation. Nevertheless, persons happening for the first time in the vicinity of one of these gates on a calm moonlight night, and perchance descrying "fair Luna "through one of the arches or between the minars, will most likely find themselves transfixed with astonishment at the marvellous beauty of the scene presented. By repairing to the artillery square, or to the short street between the square and the palace front, on a moonlight night, one can experience a new sense of nature's loveliness; the soft, chastening light of the Persian moon converts the gaudy gates, the dead mud-walls, the spraggling trees, and the background of snowy mountains nine miles away, into a picture that will photograph itself on one's memory forever. On the way home I meet one of the lady missionaries - which reminds me that I ought to mention something about the peculiar position of a Ferenghi lady in these Mohammedan countries, where it is considered highly improper for a woman to expose her face in public. The Persian lady on the streets is enveloped in a shroud-like garment that transforms her into a shapeless and ungraceful-looking bundle of dark-blue cotton stuff. This garment covers head and everything except the face; over the face is worn a white veil of ordinary sheeting, and opposite the eyes is inserted an oblong peep-hole of open needle-work, resembling a piece of perforated card-board. Not even a glimpse of the eye is visible, unless the lady happens to be handsome and coquettishly inclined; she will then manage to grant you a momentary peep at her face; but a wise and discreet Persian lady wouldn't let you see her face on the street - no, not for worlds and worlds!
The European lady with her uncovered face is a conundrum and an object of intense curiosity, even in Teheran at the present day; and in provincial cities, the wife of the lone consul or telegraph employee finds it highly convenient to adopt the native costume, face-covering included, when venturing abroad. Here, in the capital, the wives and daughters of foreign ministers, European officers and telegraphists, have made uncovered female faces tolerably familiar to the natives; but they cannot quite understand but that there is something highly indecorous about it, and the more unenlightened Persians doubtless regard them as quite bold and forward creatures. Armenian women conceal their faces almost as completely as do the Persian, when they walk abroad; by so doing they avoid unpleasant criticism, and the rude, inquisitive gaze of the Persian men. Although the Persian readily recognizes the fact that a Sahib's wife or sister must be a superior person to an Armenian female, she is as much an object of interest to him when she appears with her face uncovered on the street, as his own wives in their highly sensational in-door costumes would be to some of us. In order to establish herself in the estimation of the average Persian, as all that a woman ought to be, the European lady would have to conceal her face and cover her shapely, tight-fitting dress with an inelegant, loose mantle, whenever she ventured outside her own doors. With something of a penchant for undertaking things never before accomplished, I proposed one morning to take a walk around the ramparts that encompass the Persian capital. The question arose as to the distance. Ali Akbar, the head fan-ash, said it was six farsakhs (about twenty-four miles); Meshedi Ab-dul said it was more. From the well-known Persian characteristic of exaggerating things, we concluded from this that perhaps it might be fifteen miles; and on this basis Mr. Meyrick, of the Indo- European Telegraph staff, agreed to bear me company. The ramparts consist of the earth excavated from a ditch some forty feet wide by twenty deep, banked up on the inner side of the ditch; and on top of this bank it is our purpose to encompass the city.
Eight o'clock on the appointed morning finds us on the ramparts at the Gulaek Gate, on the north side of the city. A cold breeze is blowing off the snowy mountains to the northeast, and we decide to commence our novel walk toward the west. Following the zigzag configuration of the ramparts, we find it at first somewhat rough and stony to the feet; on our right we look down into the broad ditch, and beyond, over the sloping plain, our eyes follow the long, even rows of kanaat mounds stretching away to the rolling foothills; towering skyward in the background, but eight miles away, are the snowy masses of the Elburz Range. Forty miles away, at our back, the conical peak of Demavend peeps, white, spectral, and cold, above a bank of snow-clouds that are piled motionless against its giant sides, as though walling it completely off from the lower world. On our left lies the city, a curious conglomeration of dead mud-walls, flat-roofed houses, and poplar-peopled gardens. A thin haze of smoke hovers immediately above the streets, through which are visible the minarets and domes of the mosques, the square, illumined towers of the Shah's anderoon, the monster skeleton dome of the canvas theatre, beneath which the Shah gives once a year the royal tazzia (representation of the tragedy of "Hussein and Hassan"), and the tall chimney of the arsenal, from which a column of black smoke is issuing. Away in the distance, far beyond the confines of the city, to the southward, glittering like a mirror in the morning sun, is seen the dome of the great mosque at Shahabdullahzeen, said to be roofed with plates of pure gold. As we pass by we can see inside the walls of the English Legation grounds; a magnificent garden of shady avenues, asphalt walks, and dark-green banks of English ivy that trail over the ground and climb half-way up the trunks of the trees. A square-turreted clock-tower and a building that resembles some old ancestral manor, imparts to "the finest piece of property in Teheran" a home-like appearance; the representative of Her Majesty's Government, separated from the outer world by a twenty-four-foot brick wall, might well imagine himself within an hour's ride of London.
Beyond the third gate, the character of the soil changes from the stone- strewn gravel of the northern side, to red stoneless earth, and both inside and outside the ramparts fields of winter wheat and hardy vegetables form a refreshing relief from the barren character of the surface generally. The Ispahan gate, on the southern side, appears the busiest and most important entrance to the city; by this gate enter the caravans from Bushire, bringing English goods, from Bagdad, Ispahan, Tezd, and all the cities of the southern provinces. Numbers of caravans are camped in the vicinity of the gate, completing their arrangements for entering the city or departing for some distant commercial centre; many of the waiting camels arc kneeling beneath their heavy loads and quietly feeding. They are kneeling in small, compact circles, a dozen camels in a circle with their heads facing inward. In the centre is placed a pile of chopped straw; as each camel ducks his head and takes a mouthful, and then elevates his head again while munching it with great gusto, wearing meanwhile an expression of intense satisfaction mingled with timidity, as though he thinks the enjoyment too good to last long, they look as cosey and fussy as a gathering of Puritanical grand-dames drinking tea and gossiping over the latest news. Within a mile of the Ispahan gate are two other gates, and between them is an area devoted entirely to the brick-making industry. Here among the clay-pits and abandoned kilns we obtain a momentary glimpse of a jackal, drinking from a ditch. He slinks off out of sight among the caves and ruins, as though conscious of acting an ungenerous part in seeking his living in a city already full of gaunt, half-starved pariahs, who pass their lives in wandering listlessly and hungrily about for stray morsels of offal. Several of these pariahs have been so unfortunate as to get down into the rampart ditch; we can see the places where they have repeatedly made frantic rushes for liberty up the almost perpendicular escarp, only to fall helplessly back to the bottom of their roofless dungeon, where they will gradually starve to death. The natives down in this part of the city greet us with curious looks; they are wondering at the sight of two Ferenghis promenading the ramparts, far away from the European quarter; we can hear them making remarks to that effect, and calling one another's attention. The sun gets warm, although it is January, as we pass the Doshan Tepe and the Meshed gates, remarking as we go past that the Shah's summer palace on the hill to the east compares favorably in whiteness with the snow on the neighboring mountains. As we again reach the Gulaek gate and descend from the ramparts at the place we started, the clock in the English Legation tower strikes twelve.