IN THE
LAND OF THE LION AND SUN.

The Minerva Library.

• 1. Darwin’s Journal in the “Beagle.”
• 2. The Ingoldsby Legends.
• 3. Borrow’s Bible in Spain.
• 4. Emerson’s Prose Works.
• 5. Galton’s Tropical South Africa.
• 6. Manzoni’s The Betrothed Lovers.
• 7. Goethe’s Faust (Complete). Bayard Taylor.
• 8. Wallace’s Travels on the Amazon.
• 9. Dean Stanley’s Life of Dr. Arnold.
• 10. Poe’s Tales.
• 11. Comedies by Molière.
• 12. Forster’s Life of Goldsmith.
• 13. Lane’s Modern Egyptians.
• 14. Torrens’ Life of Melbourne.
• 15. Thackeray’s Vanity Fair.
• 16. Barth’s Travels in Africa.
• 17. Victor Hugo: Select Poems, &c.
• 18. Darwin’s Coral Reefs, &c.
• 19. Lockhart’s Life of Robert Burns.
• 20. Barth’s Travels in Africa (II.)
• 21. Lyra Elegantiarum. Locker-Lampson.
• 22. Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus, &c.
• 23. Life and Letters of Franklin.
• 24. Beckford’s Vathek, and Travels.
• 25. Macaulay’s Historical and Literary Essays.
• 26. Yonge’s Life of Wellington.
• 27. Carlyle’s French Revolution.
• 28. Wills’ Land of the Lion and Sun.

London: WARD, LOCK & CO.

SOLOMON IN ALL HIS GLORY.

(From a Native Drawing.)

IN THE
LAND OF THE LION AND SUN,
OR
MODERN PERSIA.

BEING EXPERIENCES OF LIFE IN PERSIA FROM
1866 TO 1881.

ILLUSTRATED BY FULL-PAGE PLATES FROM PHOTOGRAPHS AND FROM
NATIVE DRAWINGS.

BY
C. J. WILLS, M.D.,
LATE ONE OF THE MEDICAL OFFICERS OF HER MAJESTY’S TELEGRAPH
DEPARTMENT IN PERSIA.

THE ARMS OF PERSIA
(from the Teheran Gazette).

NEW EDITION.

WARD, LOCK AND Co.,
LONDON, NEW YORK, AND MELBOURNE,
1891.

The right of translation is reserved.

EDITORIAL NOTE.

The author of the Land of the Lion and Sun may claim an exceptional degree of credit for his book on one of the most interesting countries in the world; for he derived his knowledge not merely from a journey through the country, but from a sufficiently prolonged residence to make him thoroughly at home with the people, and to understand their inner life. The Times, on its first appearance in 1883, characterized it as probably the most amusing book of travel that had been published in recent years. The author’s profession gave him access to the personality of the people to a marked extent, giving origin to many of the amusing anecdotes referred to. The verdict of the Times was endorsed by very many journals. Nature described the anecdotes as “distinguished by three cardinal virtues: they are characteristic, they are well told, and they are infinitely varied.”

Since his return to England, Dr. Wills has become well known as a novelist and writer of short stories, which he has contributed to most of the leading magazines and society journals. His novels, some of which have been written in collaboration with Mr. F. C. Philips, have been widely read and highly appreciated.

The illustrations, on separate plates, appear here for the first time. They are reproduced from native drawings, and from Dr. Wills’s photographs and drawings.

G. T. B.

TO
MAJOR-GENERAL SIR F. J. GOLDSMID,
C.B., K.C.S.I.,
FORMERLY DIRECTOR IN CHIEF OF THE INDO-EUROPEAN
GOVERNMENT TELEGRAPH DEPARTMENT,
SPECIAL COMMISSIONER FOR THE SETTLEMENT OF THE
PERSIAN FRONTIER,
This Book is Dedicated,
WITH AFFECTIONATE ESTEEM, IN GRATITUDE FOR MANY
KINDNESSES,
BY HIS MOST OBEDIENT SERVANT,
THE AUTHOR.

PREFACE.

My reason for calling my book ‘The Land of the Lion and Sun’ is that the Lion and Sun are the national emblems of Persia, while the second title alone, ‘Modern Persia,’ would have suggested an exhaustive and elaborate array of matter which is beyond the scope of this work.

In a personal narrative, it is necessary to use a good many I’s; and to avoid being obscure, I fear I have been at times over minute, but I have preferred this to the risk of giving a false impression.

I have striven to describe life in Persia as I saw it, not exaggerating or softening anything, but speaking of Persia as it is. The whole narrative may be considered as a record of life in an out-of-the-way corner of the world; and the reader being left to make his own reflections, is not troubled with mine.

Usually no names are given, save of those of the dead, or public men.

The important subject of our fast-dying commerce with Persia, and the means of really opening the country, I have relegated to an Appendix.[1]

As to the spelling and transliteration of Persian words used, it is not classical, it does not pretend to be; but it will convey to the ordinary reader the local pronunciation of the colloquial; and the reader not knowing anything of Oriental languages is troubled very seldom with accents and (apparently) unpronounceable words. Thus Mūnshi is spelt Moonshee, as that gives the exact sound: ū is often used to avoid the barbarous appearance of oo. Of course there is no C in Persian; still as, from habit, we write Calcutta and not Kalkutta, so some words, like Cah, that use has rendered common, are inserted under C and K. I think that all that is required is, that the ordinary English reader shall pronounce the words not too incorrectly; and it is only when a work is philological that accuracy in transliteration is of any real importance. With this end in view, I have tried so to spell Persian words that by following ordinary rules, the general reader may not be very wide of the mark. To avoid continual explanation I have added a Glossary, with a correct transliteration. I have to gratefully acknowledge the valuable help of Mr. Guy le Strange in correcting this Glossary, and kindly favouring me with the transliteration according to the system adopted by Johnson, in several cases in which that author has not noted words, &c.

Oriental Club,
Hanover Square.

CONTENTS.

LIST OF FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS.

IN THE
LAND OF THE LION AND SUN.

CHAPTER I.
I GO TO PERSIA.

Wanted, a doctor—The Director-in-chief—Doubt and distrust—Simple advice—Am referred to ‘Hadji Baba’—My kit—Saddle for riding post—Vienna—Rustchuk—Quarantine—Galatz—Kustendji—Constantinople—Turkish ladies—Stamboul—I have my hair cut—“Karagews”—Turkish coffee—A philo-Turk—Shooting party—The theatres—The Opera—Armenian theatre—Gambling-house—A Bashi-bazouk—We leave, viâ the Black Sea—The Russian captain—Unarmed vessels—White Crimean wine—Foreign wines in Russia—Deck passengers—Sinope—Batoum—Poti—The post-house—Difficulty in getting food—Travelling en tröika—Kutais—A tarantass—Apply for horses—An itching palm—We start—Tiflis—Lecoq’s beer—A happy reprieve—The joys of travel—Chief of the Telegraph in Tiflis—Uniforms—Persian Consulate—Coffee and pipes—Smoking an art—Effects on the tyro—Tea—The Consul—His age—Dyeing the hair—The Opera, varied costumes at—The Tiflis ballet—Leave Tiflis—Erivan—The Pass—We lighten our load—Hotel—Washing—Nakchewan—Julfa, the frontier of Persia.

I think that there is no more painful position than that of the young medical man. I had “passed,” and had got my qualifications. An assistant I did not wish to be, and I therefore consulted the advertisement columns of the Lancet, and was prepared to go anywhere, if I might see the world, and have what Americans call a good time.

At my first attempt I came on an advertisement of three appointments, under the Indian Government, in Persia; the address was the Adelphi. Off I started for the Adelphi, which I had always looked on as a neighbourhood full of mystery, and whose inhabitants were to be mistrusted. Timeo Danaos.

A first-floor—this looked well. I knocked, was told to enter. Two gentlemen, kneeling on the floor, looked at me in a disturbed manner. The whole room is strewn with sheets of written foolscap, and it appears that I have arrived inopportunely, as official documents are being sorted. I am asked to take a seat, having stated to the elder of the two that I am come to see the director on business.

Now I couldn’t at that time fancy a director who knelt—in fact, my only idea of one was the typical director of the novel, a stout, bechained man—and my astonishment was great at being quietly informed by one of the gentlemen that he was Colonel G⸺, and should be glad to hear anything I had to communicate. I stated my wish to obtain such an appointment as was advertised; the duties, pay, &c., were pointed out, and I came to the conclusion that it would suit me as a “pastime” till the happy day when I should have a brass plate of my own. But if my ideas of a director were lofty, my ideas of a colonel were loftier; and I said to myself, one who combines these two functions, and can be polite to a humble doctor—must be an impostor.

I was asked for my credentials. I gave them, and was told to call in the morning, but distrust had taken hold of me; I got an ‘Army List,’ and, not finding my chief-that-was-to-be’s name in it, I, forgetting that we had then an Indian as well as an English army, came to the conclusion that he must be an impostor, and that I should be asked for a deposit in the morning, which was, I believed, the general way of obtaining money from the unwary.

With, I fear, a certain amount of truculent defiance, I presented myself at the appointed hour, and was told that my references were satisfactory, that a contract would be drawn up that I should have to sign, and that I should be ready to start in a fortnight; but, rather to my astonishment, no mention was made of a deposit. “I think there is nothing more,” said Colonel G⸺.

This, I concluded, indicated the termination of the interview; and, after considerable humming and hawing, I came to the point, and blurted out that, after searching the ‘Army List,’ I couldn’t find any Colonel G⸺, and that no one had ever heard of the Telegraph Department in Persia.

Instead of being annoyed, the Colonel merely asked if I knew any one at the War Office. As it happened I did. “Well, go to him, and he will tell you all about it.”

Off I went to the War Office, found my friend, and, to his horror, told him that I wanted to know if the Persian Telegraph Department existed or not, and if the director was or was not a myth. He easily satisfied me, and I felt that I had been stupidly suspicious.

I then announced to my friends and relatives my probably immediate departure for Persia. Strange to say, they declined to see it in any other light than a peculiarly elaborate and stupid joke. Instead of congratulations, I was treated as an unamiable and tiring lunatic, and from none of my friends was I able to get any information as to Persia. One man had a son in Baghdad! but it was no good his writing him, as it took six months to get an answer.

After a day or two I again presented myself at the office, and I had the country described to me, and various recommendations as to outfit given me, and I also was introduced to Major C⸺, the assistant-director. His advice was delightfully simple. “You’ll be able to wear out all your old clothes; don’t buy any new ones; have a ‘Dayrell’ bridle; get nothing but flannel shirts.” Colonel G⸺ certainly took great trouble to explain to me all about the country, and, taking me out to lunch with him, bought me Morier’s ‘Hadji Baba,’ saying, “When you read this you will know more of Persia and the Persians than you will if you had lived there with your eyes open for twenty years.” This is going a long way; it is seventeen years since I went to Persia, and I read ‘Hadji Baba’ now, and still learn something new from it. As Persia was in Morier’s time so it is now; and, though one sees plenty of decay, there is very little change.

Two other candidates came forward, to whom I was deputed to explain matters. They accepted the conditions, and, the deeds being prepared, we all three went to the India Office and signed a contract for three years.

On going to the Adelphi I was told that a sum of one hundred pounds had been handed to each of my two colleagues to take them to Persia. But I was glad to seize the opportunity kindly given me by Colonel G⸺ of travelling with him, and he told me to meet him in Vienna on a certain day.

I had now no time to lose, and proceeded to buy my kit; what that kit was it is as well the reader should know.

I got enough ordinary clothing for three years, such as we use in England for morning or country wear, also two pairs of riding-boots; these fitted me, and were consequently useless, for I soon found that in riding long distances boots much too big are the thing, as then the foot is neither cold in winter or crippled in summer; a knife, fork, and spoon, to shut up; a revolver; a small bradawl, with the point buried in a cork, for boring holes in straps; a military saddle (hussar officer’s), with wallet-holsters and a high cantle (this cantle keeps one’s rugs off one’s back when riding post, which is the only way of quick travelling in the country); a double-barrelled fowling-piece (nearly useless). My kit was packed in a couple of bullock-trunks, and my saddle sewn up in my rugs, which were thick and good. I also had a blanket-lined waterproof sheet.

I gave myself a week in Paris previous to my nominal start, and thence I proceeded to Vienna, to be ready to leave with Colonel G⸺ as soon as he arrived there.

I went to the “Golden Lamb,” a very comfortable hotel which the Colonel had chosen, and beguiled my time pleasantly enough in going nightly to the theatre to hear Offenbach’s operas done in German. I saw ‘Bluebeard,’ ‘La Belle Hélène,’ &c. I was a fortnight in Vienna, and I began to pick up a smattering, for, of course, the German learnt at school is useless; my Offenbach system I found more effectual than the usual one of “the gardener’s wife has brought the hat of the merchant’s little boy,” &c.

A week after the Colonel’s arrival our stay in Vienna ended. We left for Basiatch (by rail twenty-seven hours); slept there, and started early in the morning for Rustchuk by steamer. There we found that passengers from up the river were in quarantine; and the letters were taken with a pair of tongs, with immense precautions, for fumigation; we were advised not to land, as we should certainly have to go to the lazaretto; and we were told that if we quietly went on to Galatz, and said nothing, we could return the next day as from a healthy port.

We were lucky in taking the advice, as a passenger did venture on to the lighter, and was, willy-nilly, marched off to what we learnt afterwards was a six weeks’ quarantine.

We went on to Galatz, which we reached the next day.

Galatz is like a rural Wapping, but muddier. We went to bed, to find ourselves under weigh in the morning. We soon got to Tchernavoda, which seemed a mere village. There we landed, and thence, by a very slow train indeed, to Kustendji. At this place we heard the ravages of the cholera had been very great. We slept there that night, and started at noon next day for Constantinople by steamer.

It blew hard, and we were very glad indeed to find ourselves in the Bosphorus. There the scenery became splendid; no description of mine can do justice to the castles and palaces hanging on the water’s edge; the crowded picturesque villages that were reflected in the clear blue water; the shoals of porpoises that accompanied the ship at full speed, ploughing the water with a loud noise, and then, in their course, leaping, still continuing the race, from the water; and then entering it again amid a shower of spray. This wonderful scene continued for eighteen miles. At 5 P.M. we anchored in the Golden Horn. The scene was indescribable; all I had ever seen or read of paled before it. We were too late to land, as one cannot do so after sunset.

Next morning we went ashore in a caique, rowed by very picturesque boatmen in white kilts, passed the Custom House, and went straight to Misseri’s, preceded by our baggage, borne by three porters. These “hammals” bear gigantic burdens, and as in most Eastern towns there are no carriage-roads, they are of great use, and generally form a distinct corporation.

At Misseri’s the Colonel was well known, having stayed there several times before. In Constantinople, happily for me, instead of going on at once, my chief was delayed by orders from home for nearly two months; and I was enabled to see a good deal of the town.

Great was my delight to watch the Turkish ladies, their muslin yashmaks lending a fictitious delicacy to their complexions, going about in handsome carriages. Innumerable were the mysterious stories I heard after table d’hôte of these veiled beauties. Many a time have I gone on long expeditions into Stamboul with Mr. Ayrton, a brother of “Board of Works Ayrton,” who, with a thorough knowledge of Turkey and the Turk, took me under his wing in his daily pilgrimages to the most unsavoury but interesting nooks of the Mahommedan portion of the city. We went to coffee-houses, and listened to story-tellers; we dined on savoury kabobs; and, alas! I well remember my philo-Turk friend persuaded me to have my hair cut by a Turkish barber. It was only too well done; when the satisfied shaver handed me the glass I was as a sheep before the shearer, dumb, but with horror; my head was pink, so closely was it cropped, and my only consolation was the remark of my introducer to oriental life, that “in the East they generally did things thoroughly.”

I saw too the Turkish Punch (“Karagews”), a most immoral puppet; and the mildest and most favourable description of him was that “his manners were none, his customs disgusting,” but then my mentor said he was “very oriental”—perhaps the terms mean much the same thing.

As the coffee seemed particularly delicious in the native cafés, I, after some trouble, ascertained the real receipt for coffee à la Turca (not à la Turque), as they call it. Here it is; for each tiny cup (about a small wineglassful), a teaspoonful of coffee fresh roasted, and ground at once while hot to a fine powder in a brass hand-mill, or at times pounded in a mortar, is thrown into a small and heated saucepan; add the required quantity of boiling water. Place on the embers; when it threatens to boil over, remove; replace, and remove a second and a third time; serve. All the dregs go to the bottom. No sugar or milk used—never clean the saucepan!

At these cafés long chibouques with yellow clay heads are smoked, the heads being rested on a brass tray. A ball of live charcoal is placed on the long-cut Samsoon tobacco (or if the customer be liberal, Macedonian), the stem is jasmine or cherry wood, and the grander the pipe the longer the stem; rich customers bring their own mouth-pieces, which have a long inner conical tube that fits any stem. These mouth-pieces are of amber, and are frequently ornamented with a hoop of brilliants. The pieces of amber are two in number, and if of large size and of good colour cost two pounds, upwards to even five-and-twenty: the ordinary fashion is to separate these two pieces by a thin circle of lapis-lazuli or other stone.

The narghilé is also much used. It will be fully described as the “kalian” further on. In it is smoked the tumbaku of Persia. A few pence is charged for the whole entertainment of coffee, smoke, shelter, and music, such as it is, generally a guitar or flute-player, who is glad to play to order for a cup of coffee. The customers sit on little low stools like the French church chairs without their backs. In some of the grander cafés divans, and even chairs, are provided.

Mr. Ayrton had spent many years in Egypt. He wore a coat made by a Turkish tailor, a shawl waistcoat and a fez, and with his cropped grey hairs (it was his barber who operated on me) and his big chibouque with the amber mouth-piece (he had a large collection of them) with the ring of diamonds, he looked a thorough Turk, and I fancy posed and was treated as such. I remember myself thinking that the get-up was assumed for the purpose of getting a deeper insight into Turkish life. From what I know now, I merely suppose that, from his wearing the fez, he was, or had been, in Turkish employ; all government servants in Turkey have to wear it. Dr. Millengen, in whose arms Byron died, and who was an old government employé (physician to three Sultans), wore it; so did his son, who was in the Turkish Government Telegraph; and another son of his, I afterwards met in the Turkish Quarantine Service at Teheran, told me he wore it always while in Turkey.

I was introduced to a M. la Fontaine, a most enthusiastic sportsman, and his many nephews, and by him I was given a day’s cock-shooting, and there was plenty of it. As for me, I was an utter muff and cockney, or rather town-reared; but had I not a new pin-fire breechloader, and was it not my first day’s real shooting? And as I really did shoot two brace, I returned a delighted but tired youth. That night will be ever memorable. I ate my first pillaw, with fowls boiled to rags in it, and followed by curds with thick cream on the top called “yaourt.” How we all ate!

We had come from Pera, crossing in a steamer, and had to ride some twenty miles on rough little ponies to the sleeping place, and—horror of horrors!—on Turkish saddles. Now to the timid rider a Turkish saddle is at first a delight, for to leave it without great effort is impossible, and there is a pommel which is so high that it appears the height of folly not to cling to it; but when one’s knees are in one’s mouth, when one’s saddle is hard as iron and cuts like a knife, when one has new and heavy shooting-boots on, and one’s unmentionables have a tendency to ruck, besides having the glory of carrying a forty-guinea gun slung (oh, demon cockney gun-maker!) by a sling that slips along the barrel, and was highly recommended, with the addition of one hundred loaded cartridges distributed over the many pockets of a very new shooting-coat, in the sun, with a fur cap on—is it to be wondered at that the sufferings of the tortured Indian at the stake were child’s-play to what I endured without a groan, and repeating constantly assurances of my delight and enjoyment?—and remember, reader, we went at a brisk canter all the time.

How glad I was to lie down! How grieved I was, at 4.30 A.M. the next day, to be called, and, after a hurried wash, to start in the half dawn in my tight and heavy boots! But the firing began; I forgot the tightness of my boots, the stiffness of my back. Do you remember how stiff you felt after your first riding lesson, my friend? and you hadn’t one hundred loaded cartridges about you, and an intermittent garotte with your knees in your mouth; and I thanked Heaven I need not sit down, for weighty reasons.

Of course I fired wildly; of course I missed continually, but it was my first day, and I never enjoyed anything so much in my life. I hobbled bravely on till there was no more daylight, but I did feel thoroughly done on getting in, and I did not enjoy my ride back the next day.

I used to try and learn Persian in my idle hours, and I soon mastered the printed character and could read fluently, but without the slightest idea of meaning. Kind Colonel G⸺ gave me many a lesson, but I fear that loafing in Stamboul by day and going to the French or Italian theatre in the evening had greater attractions.

I was always passionately fond of the stage, and, as we were always going in a day or two, I used, on the principle that I might never be able to go to the play again, to go every evening.

Of course there was only a third-rate French company, but how very good they were! The term “stick,” so justly applied to many of our actors, could not be attached to any player in the little band. All were good, and all were good all round, and though the leading man might be everything in the drama, yet he didn’t object to play the lover in the little vaudeville, and played it well. An Englishman, in the event of anything so dreadful happening to him, would soon let his audience see that he was only doing it under protest.

At the Opera the prima donna was ridiculously fat, and to a man unmusical this somewhat destroys the illusion—but then the fauteuils d’orchestre only cost ten francs. I also went to an Armenian theatre, but it had the national characteristics, squalor and misery, and I did not repeat the visit. I failed even to see an Armenian piece (if such a thing exists), but sat out a fearful edition of ‘The Chiffonier of Paris;’ and I was told that all the pieces played in Constantinople (Pera) in Armenian were mere translations.

Even the delights of gaming were permitted in Pera. A few doors from Messeri’s was the Café “Flam,” as it was affectionately called by the Pera youth. “Café Flamand” was, I fancy, its real title. Here were played “pharaon” and roulette. I was recommended the former game, for economical reasons—it took longer to lose a napoleon. Nobody seemed to win at either game, but pharaon certainly “took longer.” I was not tempted to make frequent visits, as I had played for some small sums at Baden-Baden a year or two before. There one was at least cheated fairly; here the robbery was open.

A few days after the New Year the Colonel told me that we should really leave for Persia by the very first opportunity. I bid farewell to all the kind friends I had made, had my photo taken in breeches, boots, and revolver at Abdullah’s—a weakness every Englishman who reaches Constantinople is guilty of. It does not do to be too oriental. At Abdullah’s I purchased a fearful-looking type, marked a Bashi-bazouk, and found it out afterwards to be the portrait of a man whose acquaintance I made in Persia, the Dutch Consul in Bushire; but he made a very good type, being a big man; and he literally bristled with weapons, and seemed capable of any atrocities.

One fine afternoon, on January 5th, 1867, we were rowed on board the Russian steamer Oleg. We had an English-speaking captain, who was genial and communicative. My chief was confined to his cabin; and as there was nothing to read and nothing to do, I saw a good deal of the Russian. He told me that all the commanders of their mail-boats were naval officers, and that all the mail-boats could be turned into war-steamers at a few hours’ notice, merely requiring the guns to be put into them: “so that, as you English don’t let us have war-vessels on the Black Sea, we run a superior class of mail-boat” (built, however, on the Clyde). And a very superior boat she was.

I was told by the captain to avoid the high-priced wines, and stick to white Crimean. This was a particularly delicious light wine, like a good Sauterne; and I find, from after experience of Russian railway buffets, which far exceed anything of the sort we have in grandeur, that, as a rule, the liquor is simply fair red and white country wine, the only difference being in price and label.

In some of these labels the Muscovite imagination fairly runs riot. You see “Château d’Yquem,” “Schloss Johannisberg,” &c., but nobody ever seems to drink them, and they are mere table ornaments. The rich drink nothing but champagne of known and expensive brands, and bottled stout; while the middle classes stick to “piver” (Russian beer) and vodki.

Tea, in tumblers, was continually being served, with a big slice of lemon in it. The deck passengers, among whom were many rough Circassians, all armed to the teeth, cuddled down into the nooks of the cargo, and managed to keep themselves warm as best they could. They too always were drinking tea, but they adopted a plan to economise sugar that I have noticed constantly among the Russian poor: a bit of sugar is placed in the cheek, and then the tea is swallowed in gulps; the poor fellows thus keeping up a sort of delusion that they are swallowing sweet and hot tea, though the mouth only, and not the tea, is really sweetened. There was none of the exclusiveness of the Englishman. A made tea, and regaled B, C, and D; then B treated the rest, and so on; when not asleep, eating, or tea-drinking, the deck people were card-playing and smoking. The short pipe was a good deal used, and passed from hand to hand, while the trader class smoked the cigarette. All the men, and most of the women, wore a sort of rough butcher-boot; and, from the state of the roads at Poti, any other foot clothing for pedestrians would have been impossible.

We lay to off Sinope on the 7th (here the Russians, our little captain took care to remind me, destroyed the Turkish fleet), but could not land passengers, a gale blowing. We changed steamers at Batoum on the 10th.

The scenery at Batoum is very fine; the sea, without a wave, of a deep blue; well-wooded hills and the Elburz range of the Caucasus covered with snows forming the horizon. So warm was it here that we lay on the beach throwing stones into the tranquil sea.

At last we arrived at Poti, being the fifth day from Constantinople. We were put on a lighter with our baggage, and taken direct to the Custom House; thence we got on a little steamer that was to take us up the Riom river, and of this we had some twelve hours, the great part of the time being occupied in getting aground, and getting off again.

From Poti to Merand we went in a telega, en tröika, some sixty versts, over what was rather a track than a road, in thirteen hours.

A telega, or road-waggon, is easily described as an oblong box on wheels, and of the severest simplicity. The box is about five feet by three feet six inches at the top, and five feet by three feet at the bottom, with a plank in the front for the driver. There are no attempts at springs; strength and lightness are all that is aimed at; these are attained—also the maximum of discomfort. To this machine are harnessed three horses: one trots in the shafts with a yoke four feet high, the other two, in traces at either side, gallop. The harness is rope, the driver often drunk.

Travelling thus is monotonous, and after a time very painful. To the Russian officer, with his big pillow, little or no luggage, and plenty of hay, a tröika is comparatively comfortable, for he can lie stretched out, and be tolerably free from bruises, but, doing as we did, we suffered grinding torments. One telega was full of our luggage, and in the other we sat on a portmanteau of the Colonel’s; at each jolt we were obliged to clutch the edge of the machine to prevent knocking one against the other, and there was no support of any kind. To people accustomed to ride on springs our sufferings would only be apparent if they had once tried what it was to travel in this way for many hours over the roughest roads, day and night and at full speed, and without springs of any kind. When our hands got painfully bruised we changed sides, and bruised the other ones, for we were forced to hold on. When we were lucky enough to get a broadish telega we got some hay, and sat on it, thus resting our knees.

On our way we only saw one woman and, say, a hundred men. The country seemed to me very thinly populated after teeming England. On our arrival at the post-house at Merand we were shown a room with two plank bedsteads and a fireplace. I little thought that in Persia the post-houses hadn’t even the plank bedsteads.

Neither of us could speak one word of the language; we tried French, German, Italian, Turkish, Persian—all of no avail—and we had no food. At last we obtained fire and a samovar, or Russian tea urn; the first by pantomime, the second by looking fierce and repeating the word.

We pointed to our mouths, heads were shaken (perhaps they thought we wanted a dentist); at last I had a happy thought, and, by drawing a hen and egg, and hopping about the room clucking, the postmaster’s wife at last produced the required eggs; they then brought bread and sausage, the latter much decomposed.

Colonel G⸺ was taken ill in the night, and I feared we could not proceed. But by 8 A.M. (of the 12th) we were again on the road, and did the thirty-four versts on a good military road by noon. The 12th is with Russians New Year’s Day, and we found the town of Kutais for the most part drunk and letting off its firearms.

Here our landlord informed us that there was an opportunity to buy a tarantass, which we could dispose of when we reached the Persian frontier or at Tiflis.

I was greatly delighted when the Colonel decided on purchasing this very primitive carriage. Fancy an old-fashioned open carriage to hold two, with cushions stuffed in prehistoric ages with hay, a tarpaulin apron, a huge hood provided with a leather curtain which, when dropped, plunged the traveller into black darkness, but kept the wind and rain out; a gigantic box and boot, the whole slung on a perch from four posts by thick straps, and having very small fore and very large hind wheels, a plumb-line dropped from the top of the latter being quite a foot beyond the bottom. But it kept us warm and dry, would hold all the luggage, and would in theory enable us to travel with three horses instead of six. We found out afterwards that we had to take five, when we were lucky enough to get them.

I fancy the whole machine cost one hundred and fifty roubles, or, at the then exchange, fifteen pounds. Then came a wheelwright, and he took some seven hours at the wheels. At length, about five, all was pronounced ready, and we sent our “padoroschna,” or permit to take post-horses, to the postmaster for horses. Reply: “None just at present; would send them over as soon as they came in.” To lose no time, we carefully filled the boot with our luggage, and my bullock-trunks were firmly roped on behind.

We took tea preparatory to our start, and laid in provisions of bread, beer, &c., with a couple of fowls; for we were told we should find nothing but black bread and hot water on the road. Still no horses.

We went to the post-house, where we found nine beasts, but were told that these were all reserved for special service. The Colonel then smelt a rat; but what were we to do? the postmaster (a major) was dining out, and no one knew where he was.

The waiter told us at length that what was wanted was a bribe; but then we could hardly believe him, for had we not conversed with the postmaster—a uniformed and decorated individual, who spoke French and smoked cigarettes with an air?

However, there was nothing else for it; the postmaster was, much against the grain, asked to breakfast; a fifteen-rouble note was put under his plate, and an hour afterwards horses were actually being put to.

In we got, having a portmanteau, a hat-box, a cocked-hat case, a sword-case, umbrellas, rugs, pillows (these last a very needful thing in Russia; travellers even by rail carry them, and they are almost a necessity) in the carriage with us; the apron was buttoned down, the curtain triced up, and, with a wrench and a creak, off we went at a hard gallop. It is not a comfortable mode of travelling, far less a luxurious one; but one does get over the ground; one is dry; and certainly, as compared with the telega, one’s sufferings are less intense.

We occasionally left the tarantass to take tea at a post-house, where, ever for lack of fresh horses, we had to feed and rest our old ones. Our Kutais informant was right; nothing to be got but the samovar (or Russian urn) full of boiling water; no furniture, save two wooden bedsteads, with a slanting board at the head; the tariff for horses, and the “icon” (or religious picture) in the corner. Still, there was freedom from noise and movement, which was a great thing. The horses seemed to be fed on nothing in particular; they were turned out in the mud to graze, and were given branches of trees, which they gnawed as a bonne bouche, but I saw no grain given; but these horses went, and they were lashed and howled at; in fact, the driving seemed very hard work indeed. We travel day and night, and never halt but to change horses. After seventy-two hours, we at length reached Tiflis.

I didn’t see much of the road; in most places it was mud, and in many it seemed dangerous. Often our tarantass was repaired with nails and ropes, but we arrived unbroken at the Hôtel du Kaukase of M. Arsène Barberon.

This man kept a really comfortable house, and as it was suggested to us that this was the last civilised place, we were only too glad to make the most of it. We were given sheets to our beds as a favour and as a luxury; and we got a good dinner, with some “Lecoq” English stout, very good and strong. One never hears the name in England, and whether really English or not I don’t know, but it is very double, and much esteemed by the Russians.

Our bedrooms unfortunately abutted on the billiard-room; and as the Russian officers, by whom the hotel was frequented, seemed to be very loth to stop play, it was difficult to sleep till, about 4 A.M., even these festive gentlemen retired.

When I came down, I found that the Colonel, an old traveller, had preceded me, and was engaged upon a pile of official letters and telegrams.

“I shall be unfortunately detained here some days.”

I was overcome by a deep sense of gratitude that words cannot express; for I really was so tired and bruised that I felt as if I had been pummelled all over; in fact, that I should have been glad to be taken to pieces and put away for a time.

Now this perhaps will be looked on as affectation, but it is not so; as one gets used to the various modes of travelling, one ceases to have any grievance, and to feel fatigue, looking on the whole matter as in the day’s work; but the first time, it’s all very well, but we none of us like it in our hearts. Of course we called it glorious, and so it was, in the sense that it was a change.

But who would care to travel from, say, London to York in an old-fashioned bathing-machine, with a companion of greater age and social position than your own, pride preventing one’s grumbling, and going at a hard gallop over the worst of roads, and a good deal of loose and angular luggage with you, day and night?

My chief next day was waited on by a young man of prepossessing appearance, in a stylish uniform, the embroidered shoulder-straps of which were decorated by lightning-flashes. I was somewhat surprised to hear that this was a signalling-clerk of the Russian department.

In Russia every officer, however small, has his uniform, which is cheap, and stylish wear. I, being very young, perhaps felt a little jealous; but the Colonel assured me that, as uniform was always typical, mine would probably have silver leeches running up the red stripe of my trousers, and a gilt mustard-plaister in miniature on the collar. This contented me, and reconciled me to my position as “a plain-clothes officer.” The chief of the telegraph, too, called, and we called on him; many cigarettes were smoked, and much very hot tea in tumblers drunk.

We went also to see the Persian consul, who was very civil, and apparently a very intelligent man; he gave us coffee in the Persian manner. Small silver filagree cup-holders, the size of egg-cups, were handed round on a tray; and placed in each was a smaller vessel of china, holding about a liqueur-glassful of strong sweet black coffee, flavoured with cloves. It was not bad.

When the cups were emptied two servants advanced, one bearing the tray, the other taking with both hands the empty coffee-cups and holders, and placing them upon the tray.

Then came the water-pipe or kalian; three of these were brought in. My first inhalation provided me with a mouthful of peculiarly filthy-tasting water (I learnt afterwards that the water from the kalian is commonly used in Persia as an emetic); having, with some difficulty, got rid of this, I commenced to smoke, and to do as I had seen our host do, eject huge clouds from my nostrils. But I perceived that the other kalians were gone; I asked the Colonel if there were any etiquette as to sending the pipe away. He said—

“Oh, no; our host is an old friend. Smoke as long as it gives you pleasure.”

The consul asked me how I liked the Persian pipe. I eagerly replied that I had never smoked anything so mild and so delicious.

He was delighted, but seemed surprised at my calling it mild. The old gentleman spoke French, and said, “Du tout—très-fort.”

And so I found it, for I began to feel giddy. It appears that the tobacco used was particularly choice and strong, and that, as a rule, of such tobacco only a few whiffs are ever taken. I could smoke no more, and collapsed, for the next five minutes having the awful sensations of the youth who smokes his first “real foreigner.” But this feeling passed away as quickly as it came, and I was soon myself. Another pipe was brought, and then tea, à la Russe, with lemon.

Tea à la Persane consists of a very small cup, holding some two ounces; in this lump-sugar is placed, in big lumps, and if much honour is wished to be shown to the guest, when the cup is full the sugar should project from the centre of the liquid in an island!

The tea used is generally scented Pekoe among the rich, and made very weak. It is also always washed before it is allowed to draw. Persians do not like strong tea.

In after years, in Persia, I was somewhat intrigued to make out why my sweeper objected to sweep his carpets with tea-leaves, and it was only on pressure that I extracted the fact that “the servants always dried my strong black tea-leaves and sold them as tea in the bazaar.”

After some chat in Persian, which Colonel G⸺ spoke in a masterly manner, the Colonel asked for “the pipe of departure,” which, it appears, is the best way of going, as it is considered polite to ask permission to depart, and not to get up and go.

Our host was a largely-built, well-set-up man, dressed in a pair of uniform trousers, stockings (he had removed his shoes on entering the room), and a thick black frock-coat, such as the Turks wear, lined with fur; he did not show any linen. His hair and beard were jetty black, as was his heavy moustache. He wore a black Astrachan hat, which he did not remove, and a sword. He insisted on coming to the door with us, and shook hands in the most cordial manner.

As we were on the road home the Colonel asked me if I could give a guess as to our friend’s age. I said, confidently, “From forty to forty-five.”

“He is probably eighty—certainly over seventy. The black hair which you see is the result of dye. The whole of the upper classes, and all townsmen, military or government employés, dye their hair; it is done usually once or twice a week, and the substances used are, first henna, then indigo. They are allowed to remain on many hours; the result is the fine black dye you see. The villagers, as a rule, use only the henna, which gives a deep purply-black to black hair, and a bright red to white.”

I was also told that when in deep mourning a Persian ceases to dye at all (and, alas! at first he also ceases to wash); the result is comical in the extreme, for one sees men with beards of some foot or more in length half red or rusty black, and the rest quite white. When ill, too, he does not dye.

Afterwards I could always by this means make a pretty shrewd guess, even before asking the question, as to how long a patient had been on the sick-list, by the length of the undyed part of his beard.

The next evening we went to the opera, and saw ‘Don Giovanni’; the acting and singing was fairly good, but the auditorium, though it was not by any means a gala night, was brilliant in the extreme. Circassian officers, in their long coats of white, pale blue, black, &c., their breasts covered with the ornamental little silver boxes of niello-work that contain, or are supposed to contain, the charges for their picturesque weapons; their long straight swords, silver or silver-gilt; and the belts, that would delight South Kensington people, covered with bosses of this same niello-work; their boots, reaching in some cases to the knee, fitting like gloves at the foot, and so wrinkly down the shin as to certainly drive a West End coachman mad with jealousy. Then the hats—cylinders of shaggy sheepskins—white, gray, black, surmounted by a bit of inner cap of blue, red, scarlet, or white, elaborately embroidered in gold. And good-looking men, too; no little fellows—all big strapping men, who looked as if they could ride and fight, as well as come to the Tiflis Opera. Nearly all were decorated; some had many medals and orders. This decoration is overdone in the Russian Army.

With the ladies I was disappointed—the Georgians and Immeritians were in the large majority. They were heavy-jowled females, who seemed to wear a profusion of rich clothes; they had a sort of crown of velvet and gold lace, over which hung down at the back an embroidered kerchief and hideous jewelry. They never smiled—still the brilliant officers hung over their chairs; and perhaps they may have been very charming. They all had big eyes and a quantity of coarse hair. One or two blonde Russian ladies were present, and they were much dressed.

The little theatre was peculiarly decorated in a semi-oriental style, and the coup d’œil was really very striking. The portion of the opera which seemed to give the greatest satisfaction was the introduced ballet, which I understand was composed of Tiflis girls; they did not dance well, but were remarkably handsome, and much applauded. This theatre has been since burnt down, and a larger one erected.

As Colonel G⸺ was compelled to remain here eight days I was able to go again to the Opera, and I saw ‘Masaniello’ very fairly done.

I went all over the town looking out for a souvenir, but there was nothing but silver work, which was dear, and beyond my means at that time.

We had here our first taste of the celebrated Kakheiti wine. There are two sorts, white and red—the latter is the best; it is a strong, coarse, rough wine, and has a very leathery taste. As it is kept in skins, and not casks, this is not to be wondered at. It contains a great deal of tannin, and our landlord told me if kept in casks it turned black, probably from this excess of tannin (or perhaps bad casks). It costs at the hotel a rouble a bottle.

One thing that strikes one in Russia is the peculiarly good bread. I have now been in Russia five times, and I never have tasted anywhere bread so white or so delicious. Often have I made a breakfast of it, and sent my cutlet untasted away.

We laid in a good supply; and, with some Kakheiti wine, some stout, cold fowls, and tea, we left Tiflis, knowing we should get nothing till we got to Tabriz. The tarantass had been thoroughly overhauled; and, in a heavy drizzle, off we went, well provisioned by Arsène Barberon.

After four days’ severe travelling we reached Erivan. Snow had fallen heavily, and rendered some of the defiles of the Caucasus almost impassable, in particular one called Delijan, at the head of Lake Jeukjar. There we were obliged to have seven horses to the tarantass to pull and some men to push, in which we assisted. We had a precipice going sheer down on one side and snow twelve feet deep on the other. Our difficulties were increased by meeting three hundred camels laden with huge unpressed bags of Erivan (or Persian?) cotton, in a place where there was hardly room to pass, and it was impossible for either party to turn back. Our Cossacks, however—we had two of these gentry—by whipping the drivers, made them go on the outer or dangerous side, while we remained stationary until the camels had passed; then, amid much shouting and swearing, we did the Pass.

At four stages from Tiflis we had our luggage put on camels to be brought on to Erivan, and went on ourselves in the tarantass, with never less than five horses. The most slashing races take place on the road, as he who succeeds in presenting his padoroschna (or permit to take post-horses) first, takes as many horses as he needs; and if the roads are bad often takes all, as he wishes to be well ahead of rival travellers.

In Erivan we are in savage Russia—the people are the ugliest and dirtiest we have yet come across. At the so-called hotel they gave us two wooden bunks with mattresses—a great luxury after the post-houses without. Our servant, a ferocious Persian lent us by the consul at Tiflis, named Mahommed Ali, having ordered water for washing, the waiter, if the greasy ruffian could be dignified with that title, asked if it would not do in the morning.

On being sworn at in Turkish and Russian by Mahommed Ali, and afterwards beaten in the passage, water in one brass jug and one basin was brought, and the Russian stood by to pour it over our hands—this is the cleanly mode of performing one’s ablutions here. The fellow then brought a dirty towel, on which Mahommed Ali again remonstrated with him in the passage in a forcible manner; in this sort of thing Mahommed Ali is very useful.

On leaving Erivan, which was covered with snow, we reached in a day and night Nakchewan; round this place I saw cotton bushes—of course they were bare. Here we rested a night.

Going on next morning, we came to Julfa, the frontier village of a few hovels. Crossing the river Araxes, a shallow stream, we put up in the windowless telegraph office. As we saw nothing but snow since we left Tiflis, there has been little to describe in the way of scenery; as may be fancied, the cold was intense. We are now in Persia.

CHAPTER II.
POST JOURNEY TO THE CAPITAL.

Preparations for the start—Costume—Chaff bed—First fall—Extra luggage—The whip—Stages and their length—Appearance of the country, and climate—First stage—Turk guides—Welcome rest—Weighing fire-wood—Meana bug—Turcomanchai—Distances—New friends—Palace of Kerrij.

At Julfa, on the Araxes—a muddy stream, when we were there, easily fordable—is the Persian frontier, and here our horse-journey was to begin. The tarantass was sold a bargain to the postmaster. A change of clothes and boots and a few flannel shirts were stuffed in the “koorjins,” or saddle-bags, made of rough carpet; boots were greased and put on, so were spurs; and I, in my innocence, at the instigation of the saddler, who I suppose wished to get rid of them, had provided myself with a pair of huge long brass ones, such as were worn by the barons of melodrama, and palmed off on me as real Mexican persuaders adapted for long journeys—these awful things the Colonel suggested I should do without, but I did not like to be shorn of any of my splendour, and I wore them. At first I spurred myself considerably when walking, but I got over this, and no doubt they added to the picturesqueness of my get-up. Fur-cap, “horsey” box-cloth pilot-jacket, with big horn buttons, cords and boots, also a huge courier’s whip and fur gloves, made, to my youthful mind, a striking picture, and I greatly appreciated myself.

At Tiflis we had provided ourselves with bags, some seven feet long and four feet wide—these bags were to be filled with chaff, of which there is an abundance, at each station. It is called “kah,” and is the ordinary horse-feed, some of it being always in the manger; at this the Persian horse persistently munches; when he has had a bellyful of it he gets his morning or evening feed—never before. This rather primitive mattress is soft, cool in summer, warm in winter, free from insects, and there is no bed to carry.

We each carried a small washing-basin of brass; we had also a teapot and two tin plates. I had a wonderful expanding cup which I used to fill with wine, but, before I had time to drink, it generally collapsed, so I soon flung it away. We carried a few packets of candles; and, having our chaff-bags filled, we retired early, to begin on the morrow our first day’s posting. To my companion, an old traveller, this was nothing, but I looked forward to it with mixed feelings of delight and awe.

Apparently in the dead of night—really at dawn—I saw the Colonel dressed and busy; I hurried on my clothes, bundled my few odds and ends into my saddle-bags, rolled up my rugs into a cylinder, with the waterproof one outside, swallowed as many cups of hot tea as I could hold (it was terribly cold), reluctantly put my long brass spurs away—the Colonel told me I should only find them in my way—and dragged my various impedimenta into the yard.

The fact was that, with our heavy baggage, which quite loaded one of the horses, which was to be led, we were unable to take more than one servant. To be without one when posting in Persia is extremely inconvenient. Of course, if speed is a great object, a man gets along much faster without a servant, but then he has to do everything for himself, and to know how to do it.

After some three-quarters of an hour we managed to get the baggage-horse loaded with two portmanteaux, and our own beasts saddled; the koorjins, or saddle-bags, put on across the loins of the horses, and firmly secured by a strap passing from the bottom of each bag to the girths. This is most important to prevent the shaking up together of everything the saddle-bags may contain.

My “Dayrell” bridle was fitted with a common watering bit, and as the horses of Persia are accustomed to a very severe native machine, my melancholy animal, as soon as he had been lashed into a canter, bolted, and was only brought to a stop by his coming down on his nose, which he did after some quarter of a mile. Of course, with such a bit, it was quite impossible to pull him up. As usual, though we fell with a crash, no one was hurt. I struggled to my feet, but the pony lay quite still, as if injured, till the “shargird chupper,” or horse-boy, on his arrival, by a few vigorous kicks caused him to get up and shake himself. The Colonel now advised me to take the native bridle used by the shargird, and with this, of course, I could easily command my pony.

Several times we had to stop to arrange the load of the pack-horse, and also to alter the contents of our saddle-bags. These should be so packed as to be of nearly exactly equal weight, as when they are not so they gradually slip round, and one’s horse stops; when one finds one bag under his belly, the other on his crupper.

The ordinary chuppering kit of saddle, rugs, and bags is well suited for this kind of travelling, but we had besides a led horse, a tin cocked-hat case, a leather hat-box, and a sword and umbrella of the Colonel’s. Our shargird, after many attempts to manage differently, fixed the tin cocked-hat case to his saddle, en croupe, tied the leather hat-box on as a knapsack behind his shoulders, and carried the sword under the surcingle of his saddle.

We kept on at a smart canter, only stopping to fix or shift the loads of the various animals. As soon as we were a mile or two from the station the shargird ceased to lead the baggage-horse; he had been compelled to do so till then, as he would have turned back.

The cantering through the cold air was exhilarating; and now I had time to look at the country—Persia at last!—which I was to inhabit for three years certain. I found that the road, if such it could be called, simply consisted of a number of tracks across country, which ran along irregularly side by side, formed by the wear of strings of mules and camels; there was no road in our sense of the term; in fact, the judicious thing seemed to be to go as straight ahead as one could, avoiding bad bits by a curve, and keeping to the most worn portion of the track, unless it was deep in mud or water. The ponies did not require much urging, and I found it expedient to keep my big chupper whip quiet, till I had learnt how to use it with ease and effect.

This whip is provided with a short stick of hard and heavy wood, covered with leather, and having a big loop of the same, that it may hang at the wrist when not in use.

The lash is a round one of four thongs of Hamadan leather plaited, and is from four to seven feet long; when the latter, it is reduced in actual length to about three and a half feet by plaiting the lash from the stick downwards for about two feet; it ends in a knot, and beyond this are two flat pieces of leather some six inches long, which the expert keeps flicking under the horse’s nose; thus, without hurting the horse or tiring himself, letting him be aware of the punishment in store for the lazy being at hand.

The stages are from three to eight farsakhs in length, a farsakh being in the rough three and a half miles; they vary in different parts of the country, and are especially long between Teheran and Hamadan, some of the seven-farsakh stages being, in the opinion of those who have been often over them, thirty miles and more.

The average stage is, however, five farsakhs, and from one large city to another, as Tabriz to Teheran, Teheran to Ispahan, or Ispahan to Shiraz, this reckoning holds good. As a rule, a very short stage has a very bad road, a very long one a good one; but this is not invariable. The first and last stage of a long journey, too, is as a rule a very short one, as Persians like, in marching, to have the first stage a short one, that omissions may be replaced before definitely starting, and the caravan got together well outside the town. The last stage being a short one enables friends to receive them, makes it easier to put on good clothes and to brush up after the journey—in fact, to arrive in a presentable condition.

All around us were earth-hills, with quantities of loose stones on them; here and there patches of snow; in the distance, in every direction, we were surrounded by snow-covered mountains; but the sky was blue and cloudless, the air was pure and dry. As it got warmer and warmer we felt a sense of freedom, and that a change for the better had been made from the noisy and stifling tarantass.

Our guide now began to shout “Yawash!” (gently), and “Nuffus! nuffus!” (breath), and the Colonel intimated to me that we must walk our animals to give them their second wind. This we did, and we jogged along easily till within some six miles of the post-house. Then the guide rushed to the front, the ponies did their best, and it appeared the correct thing to get them along as fast as possible. The fact was that we had very good horses, so that as we cantered up to the post-house, having done our stage of six farsakhs (twenty-one miles) in three hours, we felt that the Colonel, being burdened with a greenhorn and a lot of extra luggage, had not done badly.

And now I thought that I had fairly earned a rest and something to eat. I was hungry and rather tired, for, being determined to get no cropper, unless my beast came down as well, I had used my knees too much. Your experienced chupper merely rides by balance, to avoid tiring himself. What, then, was my disgust at seeing the Colonel order out more horses at once, and to see him set to to help with the saddling. I groaned in the spirit, and did the same; though it was with some doubt that I agreed to the proposition that “it was very lucky we got horses, and could get on at once.”

The Colonel explained to me that, in travelling “chupper” (or post), it was incumbent on the traveller never to stop during the day, at least when he could get horses. This is doubtless a safe rule, but a corollary should be added that, unless the country is very safe indeed, it is as well, unless very urgent, not to go on after sunset. To a neglect of this latter rule I must put down my falling into the hands of robbers during the famine.

I now found out what it was to get a really rough and bad horse; this beast’s only pace was a hard trot, and the amount of shaking was tremendous. The road was much as before, and the going was fairly good. On reaching the next stage I was heartily glad to find there were no horses, which gave us time to get some tea, and a breakfast of hard eggs and harder biscuits. It was two ere we could make a start, and I did not forget to change my steed, and profited considerably; but the shaking had been severe, and I felt very stiff and tired. I was, however, ashamed to say so, and I chimed in with my companion in his praises of the delights of posting, and the glorious freedom of travel in the East.

Though the Colonel was a good Persian scholar, he could not make much of the guides and post-house keepers, who are all Turks; and very few of them speak Persian, Turkish being the language of the country. It is not till some four stages past Tabriz that Persian is the dialect of the peasant.

The reigning family, too, affect to think and speak in Turkish with their relatives and families; but it is not the Turkish of Constantinople, but the rougher speech of Tabriz, the cause being probably that at some period of their early life they have resided at Tabriz, where nothing else but Turkish is spoken; of course, it is also their ancestral tongue.

We got safely to our third post-house, at half-past three, got fresh horses, and started. The warmth of the last two stages had ceased, and patches of snow were getting more frequent; but I felt, though sorely against the grain, that as long as the Colonel would go on I ought not to object, under penalty of being thought a muff. Our steeds were bad; we couldn’t get more than a walk out of them, and we were six hours doing the stage, which we reached chilled to the bone. I was indeed delighted to hear from the Colonel that “it was hardly worth while pushing on!” and as I scrambled into the bare and blackened room which the postmaster allotted to us, and busied myself in getting a light, I was grateful that even the Colonel’s ideas of duty were satisfied. Of course, afterwards, such a day’s posting came to be looked on as a joke; but sixty-eight miles, over bad roads, to a man not accustomed to the saddle, is a serious matter.

Our first care was to get the postmaster, a poor ragged fellow, to light a fire of brushwood; a fierce blaze that thoroughly warmed the room, and at the same time filled the place with smoke, was the result. Then he bethought him that the chimney was stopped up with a brick; the brick was removed, and more brushwood put on. Then he gave us a carpet on loan, brought some firewood and the scales to weigh it; the weights were big stones, the scales two baskets slung on a stick.

There were recesses some yard from the ground all round the room, which was some eight feet by twelve. The floor was earth, the walls mud, the roof big poles with branches of trees laid across them. In the recesses we stuck three candles. The walls and roof were polished black from the smoke of many fires. In the part of the room near the door were flung our saddles and luggage. No furniture of any kind; we got the bullock-trunk forward to use as a table.

The shargird chupper brought our chaff-bags filled, and laid one on either side of the fireplace as a mattress; we laid our rugs, and put our saddle-bags for pillows. We made a big fire, borrowed a kettle, got some strong tea under weigh, enjoyed a dinner of cold fowl and biscuit; barricaded our door, which seemed merely three planks nailed together, and lay down to sleep like tops. The naib, or postmaster, replaced the brick, and the ashes of our fire were alight in the morning. I never enjoyed a night’s rest so much. But at 5 A.M. there was the Colonel with the tea under weigh, and adjuring me to rise.

Up I got, gobbled down some hot tea, and we started in the snow at six, for it had come down heavily in the night.

Ah, it was cold! and hardly light, the horses trying to turn back as we followed at a snail’s pace the shargird, who seemed not to know much of the road. In a few minutes I was sitting on alternate hands in a vain attempt to keep them warm. We had fortunately taken the precaution to put on big Turkish wool socks over our boots, and this kept our feet from freezing, for the cold stirrup-iron soon, in such weather, extracts any warmth from the feet.

At last the light came, and we could see the village and post-house, some half-mile off, after an hour’s wandering; but we were on the road, which was something. And now that we could see to go, and the shargird was sure of the way, off we went at the usual pace, a smart gallop. Nine o’clock brought us to the next stage—five farsakhs.

We reached Meana, at which there is a fine new post-house, at about five, but we had arranged that, unless we were compelled to sleep at this place, we would avoid it, as the celebrated so-called bug of Meana is found here. During the whole time I have resided in Persia I never could find any one who had suffered any ill effects from the bite of the “Meana bug” at all in proportion to the horrors narrated; and I must look on the description given by travellers as apocryphal: Eastwick dilates on it. The kenneh, or camel-tic, certainly causes a particularly irritating wound, which will be found fully described further on. But the “Meana bug,” I am inclined to think, is nothing more than an ordinary camel- or perhaps sheep-tic, and by no means dangerous to life (pace Eastwick). But we both at that time were inclined to believe that there was something in the terrible accounts given of the insect, and so we avoided Meana. As it was we made a very great mistake; Meana, having at that time a brand-new post-house, was quite safe; but as we pushed on darkness caught us, and we did not arrive till nearly ten at night at Turcomanchai. Here was an old caravanserai only to put up in; the post-house was in ruins. And on the Colonel asking the postmaster if he had many insects he shrugged his shoulders in a significant manner.

We found a French merchant, with a big box of valuables, in the blackened cell of the doorway appropriated to posting travellers. He was marching, but had taken the room as the only water- and wind-tight one, and he welcomed us to a share of it and his big fire. It was very cold outside, and we were glad to get to the grateful warmth and partake of a cup of tea. But we had not been in the place half an hour when we found that it was literally alive. We couldn’t go on, and there was no other place to go to.

I throw a veil over our sufferings. How we regretted the clean new post-house at Meana, and how glad we were to leave Turcomanchai[2] at the earliest break of dawn! The insects, however, were merely fleas, B flats, and those nameless to ears polite.

There was little or no snow on the road as we started, but it was sufficiently cold; the roads were hard, good, but full of loose stones.

Such was the journey—each day a repetition of that before it, varied only in weather.

February 12, after going 480 miles chupper, we were met about twenty miles from Teheran by Major S⸺, the director of the Persian telegraph department, Mr. B⸺, my medical chief, and Messrs. T⸺ and M⸺, secretaries of the English Legation, all friends of Colonel G⸺’s.

They escorted us to a place called Kerrij, a palace of the Shah’s, gave us a sumptuous dinner, and we lay down to sleep in huge rooms gay with paint, gilding, and coloured glass. A mighty brew of egg-flip prevented a wakeful night; and the next morning we rode over a muddy plain to Major S⸺’s house in Teheran, which was to be my home till I started for “down country.”

CHAPTER III.
TEHERAN.

Teheran—The Director’s house—Persian visits—Etiquette—Pipes, details of—Tumbakū—Ceremony—Anecdote—The voice of the sluggard—Persian medicine explained—My prospects as a medico—Zoological Gardens.

Teheran struck me as a poor place, particularly from the outside of the town; the streets were narrow, and the houses seemed mostly of plastered mud, or of mud alone. And when we reached Major S⸺’s house, on the outside the prospect was not inviting, but no sooner were we inside than everything was comfortable: good doors, good windows, carpets of great beauty, chairs—only try to do without these for a few days, and then, and then only, does one appreciate their comfort—big settees and divans, and a host of smart and attentive servants. Tea and pipes at once; a warm bath, much needed, in prospect, and, above all, the freedom from the morning’s call to boot-and-saddle at an unearthly hour.

No sooner was breakfast over than messages were for ever arriving for my chief as to what time he would receive this grandee or that friend; and shortly the ceremonious visits commenced. I was, of course, only too glad to see what a Persian visit was like.

To be a successful entertainer in Persia it is imperative to be a master in the art of compliment, as the conversation itself is generally trivial; but the exact amount of compliment must be meted out with a careful hand, according to the visitor’s rank. By no means should the thing be overdone, as an excess of good treatment, over and above what the caller is entitled to, merely lowers the recipient of the visit in the guest’s estimation.

Of course I did not at once appreciate the differences of the intonation in the “Bismillah!” or invitation to be seated, but I saw that great differences were made in the position of the guest, in the duration of his visit, and whether he were pressed to stop or not, and in the rising and advancing to receive him, or the refraining from so doing.

I soon found out that in addressing a great man, or at times an equal, the third person plural was frequently used; while the expression “bander” (literally, the slave), really “your servant,” in lieu of the first person singular, touched on scriptural form. “Shuma” (you), the second person plural, was, of course, frequent, but in the case of a grandee some prefix was used, as “sircar-i-shuma” (your excellency), &c.; these prefixes it was necessary to use correctly, giving each man his due, or if you wished to please him, a little more than his due. To give a man a good deal more than his due was understood to be sarcasm.

The second person singular is only used to inferiors, servants or children, or in anger. As a rule the lower-class Persian always uses to the European the second person singular, if he thinks he can do it with impunity; and it has to be resented, and the transgressor put in his place at once, or all respect is gone. Of course the offender feigns ignorance.

Each visitor was regaled with some three little cups of tea and the same number of water-pipes; some of the more advanced among the guests affected cigarettes, as did Major S⸺ and most Europeans. A few whiffs would be taken from the water-pipes, and they would be removed or passed on, at the will of their masters, for I noticed that, as a rule, the greater personages brought their own pipes.[3]

The tobacco smoked in the kalian is called “tumbakū,” in distinction to “tootoon,” or that smoked in pipes or cigarettes; it is sold in the leaf, which is packed dry in layers, and is preserved in bags sewn up in raw hide; it improves by age, and is quite unsmokable the first year. The best comes from Jarūm, south of Shiraz.

When a visitor is offered a pipe, and there is not a second one to hand, it is at once taken to him by the host’s servant. He then deprecatingly suggests that his host should smoke first; this is declined by a sweeping gesture. He now offers it to the other guests, if any, and, on receiving a negative gesture, commences to inhale.

Should, however, the host be much superior in position, the visitor will either refuse to smoke first, or, if he has the bad taste to do so, the host does not smoke at all, but sends the pipe away. When there are many visitors and only one pipe, the greatest one smokes first, then the rest smoke in order of rank, previously paying the compliment of suggesting that some one else should precede them. These little punctilios are endless.

Priests or holy men do not, as a rule, like to smoke the pipe of the European, or to smoke even out of the same pipe. Of course the only plan to be then adopted is to feign a disinclination to smoke at all. As a rule, Persians (the Frenchmen of the East) are usually so polite as to prevent any sign of this disinclination to be apparent, and will bring their own pipes, or smoke those of friends, and so get over any hitch. But at times bigoted men will try to be offensive. I well remember a case in point. A priest of Hamadan, high in office, had occasion to call on our superintendent, Captain Pierson, R.E. Pierson, with whom I lived at the time, sought to provide against any possible unpleasantness by purchasing a pipe with a clay bottle and head (it was summer-time, and such pipes are liked then), and told his servant that if the priest didn’t provide his own smoke, this particular pipe was to be brought to him, with a hint in a whisper to the guest that it was an entirely new one.

As he had expected, so it turned out; the holy man came without his pipe, and on the usual procession of pipebearers entering, he roughly informed Pierson that he did not smoke after Europeans. Pierson drew his attention to the fact that a new pipe had been specially provided.

He took it, smoked it, and then had the gross impertinence to hand it to Pierson; the latter politely declined, but the priest was not content, and drew from Pierson the following:—

“Just as it would be painful to you to smoke after a European, so it would pain me to do so after a Mussulman. I provided against you having to do without your pipe, and respected your prejudices; as you are my guest, politeness prevents my expressing what I think of your conduct. You can break that pipe to pieces and burn the stick”—this to his servant—“I do not care to smoke it.”

The priest turned pale, sat silent for a minute, and then said in apology—

“Yes, yes, you say truly, I have eaten dirt.”

Strange to say, we were very friendly with him afterwards.

The pipe affected by the lower classes is the short chibouque, this nearly every North Persian of the lower class carries at his back in his girdle or in his pocket; there is a small clay, brass or iron head, and a straight stem of cherry-wood, six inches to a foot long, with a bore some half-inch in diameter through it; there is no mouth-piece, and it is held to the lips, and not in the teeth. The tobacco smoked is usually Samsoon, a common kind of coarse Turkish; or Koordi, a mild tobacco, nearly white in colour, but with a pungent flavour; there are many other varieties. This Koordi looks like coarse sawdust, and is quite dry, and is simply the leaf-stalk and stem of the plant coarsely pounded; to look at it, no one would suppose on a first inspection that it was tobacco at all: the best comes from Kermanshah.

A third kind of pipe is used by the Arabs of the Gulf and many South Persians; it consists simply of a tube of clay, an inch in diameter, bent at a right or acute angle, and constricted at the middle; from end to end it measures four to seven inches; one side is crammed with tobacco, “Tootoon i Koordi;” a coal is placed on it, and it is passed from hand to hand till the contents are burnt out. It is a very primitive pipe.

Enough of pipes. By five all the visitors had gone; we dined at seven, and I retired to sleep in a comfortable bed.

At about five[4] next morning I am roused by—

“Chai, sahib” (tea, sir); and a lordly individual, with huge mustachios, a black lambskin cap, a brown cloth inner coat, a blue cloth outer coat, a broad belt, and a long “kummer” (or straight broad-bladed sword), dark-blue “shulwar” (what an American calls pants, and an outfitter pyjamas), and his stockinged feet—his shoes were outside my door—places a cup of tea, some twice-baked sweet biscuit, of delicious crispness, and some marmalade, at my side, and departs. He soon returns with a second cup of tea and a kalian.

As I am a griffin, he draws my attention to the latter being—“Welly good thing, kalian.”

He then goes through a pantomime suggesting sleep, talking all the time to me in Persian. I take his advice.

At eight he wakes me, and I find he has a warm tub ready for me. I dress once again in the clothes of ordinary life, and go down, to find no one about, for Major S⸺ has gone to the office, and taken the Colonel with him.

However, my especial chief, Mr. B⸺, soon appears, accompanied by his big black dog “Topsy,” who comes into all the rooms and sits on all the settees: there is a fine sense of liberty in this. Mr. B⸺ warns me that I must not hope to make anything by practice—that he never did, and I never shall; but that there is a fine field for gratuitous work.

He then explains to me the Persian system of medicine. It has its advantages in its delightful simplicity. All diseases are cold or hot. All remedies are hot or cold. A hot disease requires a cold remedy, and vice-versâ.

Now, if the Persian doctor is called in, and has any doubt as to the nature of the disorder, he prescribes a hot remedy, let us say; if the patient gets better, he was right; if worse, then he prescribes a cold remedy, and sticks to it. He thus gets over all need for diagnosis, all physiological treatment, and he cannot, according to his own lights, be wrong.

His prescriptions contain a multitude of mostly obsolete and inert drugs, ten being a small number of ingredients, twenty an ordinary one. Before he is summoned, an omen is taken by the patient and his friends, as to who shall be called in; when he has seen his patient, another is taken, as to whether his advice shall be followed or not. His fee is a few pence, or more generally he undertakes the case on speculation; so much—of which he is lucky if he gets half—if the patient gets well; nothing if he doesn’t.

Most of the relatives, friends, and neighbours prescribe various homely, or at times, powerful remedies, which are all as a rule tried.

Quiet by the sick-bed is unknown; in fact, the patient used to fuss and noise would be depressed by it. And remedies and contrivances of a barbarous nature, such as putting a patient in fresh horse-dung, sewing him up in a raw hide, are the rule rather than the exception.

Usually the European doctor is distrusted, only called in when the patient is breathing his last, or by the very rich or very poor.

Mr. B⸺ gave me one very good piece of advice. “You will go to Hamadan—with the Persians novelty is everything. Strike while the iron is hot, and before the novelty is worn off, and you—well, you will get lots of experience.”

I was astonished and incredulous—it was all true.[5]

We visited the telegraph-office, and looked round the Colonel’s garden, returning to breakfast at eleven, and we sat down to a substantial déjeuner à la fourchette, with country wines, and tea for those who preferred it. It was followed by the inevitable kalian and coffee.

I wanted much to see the Zoological Gardens, but we were told that the Shah had turned the beasts loose. We, however, decided to go, and we found it so—they were all loose.

The leo-panther, a cross between the lion and panther, a lovely animal like an immense cat, very tame, allowing one to pat him; two lions, a bear, two tigers (young ones), walking about with the antelopes and wild sheep. I must say the presence of the tigers was not quite pleasant. There is a pretty building—a sort of summer pavilion—here, belonging to the king, well worth seeing.

A curious incident occurred as Major S⸺, Mr. M⸺, Mr. B⸺, and I were walking home from these Zoological Gardens; we were crossing a bit of desert plain behind the gardens towards the Major’s house. On a sudden we saw come from under the corner of the garden wall at a shambling trot—a big tawny animal; to discover that it was a lioness was instantaneous, and it was coming our way. B⸺, with whom discretion was the better part of valour, did not hesitate; like the last of the Horatii, he “vowed revenge, and to pursue it fled.”

We kept on, but fear was in all our hearts—I know it was in mine, possibly the Major was exempt—but we walked very fast, looking ever and anon at the advancing lioness. There was apparently no mistaking the shambling pace of the wild beast; as it got nearer it turned out to be a big dog. Of course when we arrived at the house we all laughed at B⸺.

The Major’s dignity and profession forbade his running, Mr. M⸺, as a diplomat, never of course did anything in a hurry, so couldn’t run, and as they were present I didn’t like to run, though I itched to do it. Of course, B⸺ said he knew it was a dog, and ran to frighten us; if so, his simulation of terror was almost lifelike.

In the evening we dined at the English Mission,[6] where there is a billiard-table—my last game for some time, I fancy.

CHAPTER IV.
TEHERAN.

The Gulhaek Road—Visit to a virtuoso—His story—Persian New Year—Persian ladies—Titles—The harem—Its inhabitants—A eunuch—Lovely visions—The Dervish—The great festival—Miscellaneous uniform—At the Court of Persia—The Shah—The ceremony—Baksheesh—Rejoicings.

I passed a fortnight in Major S⸺’s house, and gradually got some sort of smattering of colloquial Persian; but I could not see much of the place, for I had no servant of my own, and, though a horse was always at my disposal, not knowing the language, I was unable to go out alone, and was forced to content myself with rides on the “Gulhaek Road” with my chief, Mr. B⸺.

This “Gulhaek Road” was the usual ride, simply because it was at that time the only attempt at a road on our side—or, in fact, any side—of Teheran. It led past the Kasr-i-Kajar, one of the royal palaces, to Gulhaek, where the English Legation summered, and also to the other numerous villages at the foot of the mountains, at each of which a foreign legation during the summer hung out its ensign; as Zergendeh, where the Russians lived; Tejreesh, the French, &c.

One visit we paid, to a gentleman who had been many years in the Persian service, was rather amusing. Our host was an old Frenchman who held an appointment as instructor in French and translator to the Shah, and was a Mahommedan. I do not know whether the account I heard of his mode of life was true or not. It was that he proceeded to Hamadan every year, and invested in two wives; as the spring came round he divorced them, and made his annual excursion, returning with two more. He was a very cheery old man, and evidently derived great comfort from a barrel-organ that stood in his room. Of his other comforts I know nothing, but I did see two remarkably clean pairs of ankles and two remarkably fine pairs of eyes. This was all one could make out of two closely-veiled females, who, with many giggles, constantly bustled in and out of the room on divers pretexts. The Frenchman had a large collection of valuable antiquities, which he showed us, and they were all genuine. That was seventeen years ago; now, in a hundred specimens from Persia, be they what they will, ninety are shams. Amongst other treasures he had a fine balass ruby as big as a florin, on which was cut an intaglio of a Sassanian king, which was, I believe, afterwards purchased by Mr. Alison (then Her Majesty’s Minister) for a large sum. At that time the craze for objects of oriental art had not set in, and the big tiles we saw (or bricks) of reflet métallique, with raised inscriptions, were such as one seldom sees nowadays, save in national collections.

Our host’s history had doubtless been a checkered one, and I was told on good authority that he had a faithful page who waited on him, and—gaily dressed as a boy-pipebearer, a favourite attendant with the wealthy of the capital—attended his master wherever he went. The page was a lady in disguise, and a Mussulman; but, alas! this romantic episode could not be allowed to continue. Some busybody betrayed him to the priests, he and the lady were arrested, and he had the usual choice of Islam or death. Under the circumstances he chose the former, and retained, under an outward conformance to the tenets of Mussulmanism, a practical power of jollity and “keeping it up” which few of the most advanced viveurs could rival. I was afterwards led to understand that the French Minister of the day at the Court of Persia had the power, but not the will, to protect the poor fellow against the very unpleasant choice given him. Years sober us all, and I saw the gentleman long afterwards, a most grave and reverend seigneur.

The Persian New Year was about to commence, and, as there is always a jubilee reception of all the foreign ambassadors by the Shah, it was decided that Colonel G⸺ should be presented at it by the minister, and I too was to have the pleasure of seeing the splendours of the Persian Court; after which Major S⸺, who was going to Baghdad on duty, kindly promised to allow me to accompany him as far as Hamadan, where I should enter on my active duties.

One morning my medical chief asked me if I should like to visit the anderūn, or ladies’ quarter, of a great Persian nobleman?

“As you are going down country you probably won’t have the chance again; and I have seen such things too often for it to be any pleasure to me.”

Of course I was delighted. I hurriedly put on a long-tailed coat, which is de rigueur in visiting a Persian house, our short ones being considered by them as extremely indecent. I had goloshes on over my boots, and rode off with one of B⸺’s servants to the house of the Eyn-ul-Molk (eye of the state); such titles, not being hereditary ones, are usual among the statesmen and great officials of Persia.

“The Sword of the State,” “The Pillar of the Kingdom,” “The Shadow of the King,” are all titles in actual use; they are sufficiently high-sounding and poetical even to satisfy a Persian’s sense of dignity.

No sooner is a prince born, than the king proceeds to give him a title, which as he grows in dignity and years is often changed for a higher one; thus, when I came to Persia, Sultan Massūd Mirza, the eldest son of the king, was known as Yemeen-u-dowlet, or Sword of the State; this some ten years afterwards, when the young man became a real power in the kingdom, was changed to Zil-es-Sultan, or Shadow of the King.

On reaching the house of Eyn-ul-Molk, I was at once conducted to his presence, given a chair, and treated with great consideration. I removed my goloshes at the door of his apartment. An interpreter, who spoke pigeon French, informed me that one of the ladies was ill, and that I had better see her and prescribe.

The Eyn-ul-Molk was a blear-eyed, venerable man of evidently high position, very rich and very anxious; as the interpreter put it, the patient was trop jolie pour mourir, and my expectations were considerably aroused.

I was handed over to a white eunuch, who seemed to be troubled with all the ills that flesh is heir to, and who grunted and grumbled a good deal as he led me towards the part of the house set apart for the habitation of the ladies.

After passing through several yards and passages, we came to a low door with a curtain. My guide entered, and raised the curtain, previously shouting “Bero! bero!” (be off, be off).

A crowd of children and negresses scuttled off into the various rooms which surrounded a well-kept garden, with beds of flowers and playing fountains, some thirty yards by fifteen.

Those who did not go out of sight drew down the big sheets of printed calico that covered their heads, turning themselves into faceless bundles, terminated in bare legs visible to the knee, with feet either bare or thrust into tiny slippers; even the very little girls had veils, though they did not cover their faces, and were mostly pretty little round-faced things, with large eyes, and fringes of black hair cut across their foreheads.

I had been told not to appear to notice anything, as that would be interpreted as a desire to look at the inhabitants of the anderūn, which would be considered the height of bad breeding. So I kept my eyes discreetly fixed on the ground, feeling certain that I should find plenty of time for thorough investigation.

The old eunuch took me into a room, beautifully carpeted, and bare of all furniture save one chair, on which I was directed to sit.

He left me, and I noticed that the room was decorated with small mirrors let into elaborately cut plaster-of-Paris work; the walls were so covered with small facets of mirror that one could hardly see anything of the white plaster, which was arched at the ceiling, arch within arch, in the manner so familiar to us in the decoration of the Alhambra; but a peculiarly chaste effect was produced, for neither colour nor gilding was used—only pure white plaster and mirror. In many places there were panels, where plaster-work, cut (not moulded) in high relief, showed patterns whose effectiveness could not be denied. In fact, the result was one of chastened splendour quite new to me. The doors, which were of polished walnut-wood, were covered by curtains of bright colours of Yezd silk, some six feet by four, simply suspended in front of them. The window, which occupied one entire end of the room, was composed of small pieces of glass of all the colours of the rainbow, set in a wooden frame of a geometrical pattern of a very elaborate nature; as the window was some fourteen feet by ten, and no piece of glass was more than two inches square in size, some idea may be formed of the enormous amount of work in such a piece of carpentry. The wood employed in such work is plane, and it does not warp.

This window was made in three compartments; each one was made to draw up when required, thus giving a full view of the garden; all were, however, at present down, and the coloured light which entered produced a very rich effect—a relief, too, from the strong sunlight outside.

Round three sides of the room were nummuds, or felt carpets, some two inches thick; as one walked on them, it was like going over the softest turf; they were light-ochre in colour, with a pale-blue pattern inlaid. In the centre was a carpet some twenty feet by nine. I had never seen such a carpet; it was very beautiful, but of very subdued colours, and of a rather large pattern.

In each of the three walls there were three recesses or takhjahs, a yard from the ground, and in each of these was placed a glass vase of narcissus blooms; as every vase contained some hundred stems, the perfume was somewhat overpowering.

The eunuch now returned, seated himself on the ground at my side, and a black woman, of hideous aspect, brought me a water-pipe.

While I was smoking it, the curtain at one of the doors was lifted, and two young ladies entered, aged from sixteen to eighteen, though they seemed some three or four-and-twenty to me. I must acknowledge that I was unprepared for such a free display of loveliness, and it was the first time I ever saw Persian ladies in their very becoming, if slightly indelicate, home-dress.

Their feet and legs were bare; their skirts were bouffés by a number of under-skirts such as are usually worn by the ballet on our operatic stage; but instead of these under-garments being white and gauzy, they were of silk, and of all colours. The outer skirt was of silk also—in the one case pale pink, in the other pale blue—with gold patterns on them, and these voluminous skirts barely reached their knees. Each lady wore a small zouave jacket of bright-coloured gold-embroidered velvet, with tight-fitting sleeves, which buttoned from the elbow with a multitude of small silver buttons, but these buttons were not fastened. A gold-embroidered gauze shirt was worn under this jacket that left, I am sorry to say, nothing to the imagination; the sleeves of it were wide and open. Each lady had tied a gold-embroidered silk kerchief, called a “chargāt,” over her head, fastened by a brooch at the chin; each had a fringe of hair over her forehead, and each had a big love-lock, which came from under her kerchief, at the middle of her cheek. Long tresses of black hair came below their waists.

Both were good-looking plump girls, in robust health. Both giggled, and both were full of fun.

The one who was supposed to be ill had not coloured a very rosy pair of cheeks; the other was heavily rouged. Their eyelashes were darkened with antimony, but their eyebrows were unpainted. The Persian woman’s eye is usually very dark and large, and the painting the edges of the lids produces a very languishing effect.

After talking to the eunuch for some minutes, in which the old fellow evidently was calling these very gushing ladies to order, they suddenly plumped down on their knees in front of me, and compelled me to feel both their pulses, look at both their tongues, examine their throats, and a second time to feel their pulses at the other wrist.

As I understood very little Persian, and neither they nor the eunuch anything but that language, it was very difficult to make out what was the matter. One thing was very certain—they looked upon the whole matter as a very good joke; and seemed inclined to torment the eunuch and make great fun of me.

At last one lady showed me a flea-bite on a very round and shapely arm, which literally jangled with glass bangles and gold bracelets. As this was the most serious symptom I had yet seen, I began to think I had better retire, when tea was brought in by a young negress.

The ladies, the eunuch, and myself, all partook, but the two ladies did so with shrieks of laughter, in which the negress joined.

Suddenly a cry of “Aga! aga!” (the master, the master) was raised, and I saw the Eyn-ul-Molk coming up the garden. The two indiscreet ones became at once staid matrons of the severest type. They sprang to the other side of the room, they drew their kerchiefs, or rather the corners of them, over their faces, leaving the eyes alone visible; and the young negress who had brought the tea became a statue of propriety in ebony, pulling her big print veil over her mouth till she looked like a living bolster.

The old nobleman came in, and I was made to feel again the pulses of my patient, and again look at her tongue. But nothing but her eyes and tongue were now visible, and both ladies pretended to look on the infidel doctor with horror. They answered their husband’s questions only in a whisper, and in a few minutes I followed the Eyn-ul-Molk to the “berūni,” or general apartments. I noticed that these were furnished with much less luxury than the women’s side.

I now managed to find out that the fair sufferer had that morning very early had a slight attack of intermittent fever, and, with the help of the interpreter, I said that I would prescribe on getting home.

The farewell pipe was brought, and I retired, I trust, gracefully. Thus ended my first visit to a Persian patient.

I suppose that my remedies were successful, for, though I was not asked to attend again, I received a plate of oranges and two dried salmon as a fee, with a polite message of thanks in a day or two.

As this visit had occupied some four hours in all, I came to the conclusion that I should not add much to my income by private practice, the result of an attendance on the wife of a great noble being so small in a money point of view; and though interesting at the time from its novelty, yet I felt that that would soon pass off.

I had been regularly robbed of my rest, after the first few dreamless nights that one has at the end of a long journey, by a sort of hooting sound, followed by cries of “ya huc, h-u-u-u-c.” These noises were repeated at irregular intervals all through the night, and I found also that they occurred in the day-time whenever Major S⸺ entered or left the house. They proceeded from the Major’s dervish, and they grew louder and more frequent day by day.

The dervishes, or wandering mendicants, are persons who, from laziness or inclination, take a vow of poverty, either for a time or permanently. They form various colleges or sects, and have recognised heads (“mūrsheds”) to whom they show great deference. It is extremely difficult to find out what their precise tenets are, for the more learned among them have a great disinclination to discussing religious matters with the infidel, while the more ignorant seem, when sane, to have really no religion, save that of doing no work. In many ways they resemble the monks of old amongst ourselves, though, as—in Persia at least—they seldom live in communities, “wandering friars” would be a safer comparison. Persians as a rule dislike and despise them, but they fear to offend the masses by showing it, and cede to them a great show of deference. The more respectable simply wander about, obtaining free food and lodging in any town they may pass through. Others combine the profession of travelling mountebank and dealer in charms with that of religious mendicancy.

Many are clothed all in white, having taken a vow to that effect; and most of them refrain from shaving or from cutting the hair. All, or nearly all, wear a tall cap of felt or cloth, shaped like a sugar-loaf, and ornamented by inscriptions of texts from the Koran. Most of them carry a carved almsholder, which is generally composed of a huge nut elaborately carved, and suspended by brass or silver chains from the waistband. A steel axe is often carried, and a panther or deer-skin worn. All affect a striking and eccentric appearance, and all have a lean and travel-worn air, save some few, who merely affect the costume, and are dervishes only in dress.

One man who used to haunt the Gulhaek Road was entirely naked, and was a most importunate and offensive beggar. A European got into some trouble on this man’s account, for on his accosting him with great importunity, and then proceeding to curse him because his demands were ungratified, the despised infidel administered several lashes with the long thong of his hunting-crop.

Another celebrated dervish, who is a man of some property, draws a good pension from the Shah, and is sent yearly to some shrine to pray for the king, his expenses being defrayed from the royal purse. He perpetually rotates his head, after the manner of the harlequin of the old school, and incessantly vociferates in a loud voice, Ali Oh! Ali Oh! As he is always bareheaded, and an old man rather inclined to corpulence, the result is not edifying; but his perquisites must be very large, as he is well known to possess the royal favour. Provincial governors and local magnates treat royally “him whom the king is delighted to honour.” I have seen this man roll his head continuously and vociferate his cry, merely pausing for breath, for three hours at a stretch: the power of doing this continuously can only have been attained by long practice. His journeys over all Persia are so frequent, and he is so well known, that in every large town great crowds turn out to gaze on and follow “Ali Oh!”, by which name the man is always known.

A striking appearance is attained at all hazards; often the clothing being merely a pair of short drawers, an antelope, panther, or tiger-skin being slung across the shoulder, and an axe or huge club, often armed with spikes, being almost invariably carried.

When a dervish meets a horseman or any one of condition he offers him in the politest manner a flower, or even a leaf or blade of grass; as a rule it is accepted and a trifle given. At other times the dervish will simply stretch out his hand or his almsholder, and favour the passer-by with a steady stare, the word “huc” (my right) being suddenly ejaculated.

Dervishes are often professional story-tellers, the costume being merely donned for effect; or, as in the case of a highly-gifted story-teller of my acquaintance, one Aga Nusserulla of Shiraz, a man who earned a good living by his erudite and interesting tales, the cap only was worn, and that merely when engaged in his public recitals; he also carried the big iron axe, with which he gesticulated in a manner really graceful and artistic.

I often, as I grew more acquainted with Persian, had this man in to beguile the tedium of the long evenings, and he would sit by the hour under the orange-trees, rattling off an endless story freely interspersed with poetical recitations, which were always apposite and well given—in fact, they were intoned. He never allowed the interest of his tales to flag, and never left off, save at a point so interesting as to ensure a request for his attendance the succeeding evening, adopting the principle of the lady of the ‘Arabian Nights.’ I frequently, on passing through the Maidan, or public square, of Shiraz, saw Aga Nusserulla surrounded by a gaping crowd of peasants, porters, and muleteers squatting in a circle, he striding up and down and waving his axe as he told his story of love or fairyland; then he recognised my presence by merely the slightest drop of his eyelid, for his harvest of coppers would have been blighted had he betrayed to his gaping listeners his intimacy with a “Feringhi” (“Frank”—the term used in Persia for all Europeans to their face; that of “Kaffir,” or “unbeliever,” being carefully kept for speaking of them in their absence).

The tales told in the bazaar to the villagers were mostly bristling with indecency; but the dervish never transgressed in this respect on getting a hint from me that that sort of thing was unpleasing, and his stories were always of great interest, intensely pathetic at times, and at others very comic. His power of imitation was great; the voices of his old men and women were unmistakable, while the sex of the lovers was equally distinct, and his laugh was infectious and sympathetic.

Another dervish I knew was a man six-feet-six in height, who was possessed of the sounding title of “King Panther” (Shah Paleng). This man’s only title to respect was his great height and startling appearance, for he was but a stupid and pertinacious beggar, after all. I had the misfortune to make his acquaintance, having selected him as a good photographic type; I got my type, but could not get rid of my model, always finding the fellow seated in my courtyard, engaged apparently in religious meditation. It was only by the strongest remonstrance with my servants that I could get him kept out of the house, and even then he used to haunt my door.

Dervishes, as a rule, have many vices. They have very often vague ideas of meum and tuum, and debauch and rob the wives of the villagers by tricks; in fact, their holiness is more believed in by the women than the men throughout Persia. Many are drunkards, others take opium; this is often the cause of their haggard appearance.

Others indulge in the smoking or drinking of bhang, or Indian hemp, and when under the intoxicating influence of this drug, a state which is induced prior to the coming-on of the stupefying effect, they have been guilty of great and dreadful crimes.

In Shiraz they were credited with nightly orgies and the celebration of unknown rites, the mysteries and horrors of which were probably much exaggerated, being possibly merely debauches of smoking and drinking.

So common is the condition of the dervish in Persia, that in each of the big towns there is a shop appropriated to the sale of their paraphernalia of tiger-skins, axes, embroidered hats, &c.

The vows seem simply to consist of those of poverty and obedience to a chief, with a payment of a portion of the alms extracted from the charitable to him. There is no vow of continence; and, on the whole, a dervish may be generally said to imply an idle “vagrom” man, who lives by imposing on the good-nature of others.

We were approaching the Aid-i-No-Ruz, or festival of the New Year, when it is the custom of the dervishes to erect a sort of tent at the street-door of any personage, and to remain in it till dismissed with a present.