of some bystanders where I can obtain elcmek; some of them want to know how many liras I will give for ekmek. When it is reflected that a lira is nearly five dollars, one realizes from this something of the unconscionable possibilities of the Persian commercial mind.
While this question is being mooted, a figure appears in the doorway, toward which the people one and all respectfully salaam and give way. It is the great Pasha Khan; he has bethought himself to open my letter of introduction, and having perused it and discovered who it was from and all about me, he now comes and squats down in the most friendly manner by my side for a minute, as though to remove any unfavorable impressions his inhospitable action in sending me here might have made, and then bids me accompany him back to his residence. After permitting him to eat a sufficiency of humble pie in the shape of coaxing, to atone for his former incivility, I agree to his proposal and accompany him back. Tea is at once provided, the now very friendly Pasha Khan putting extra lumps of sugar into my glass with his own hands and stirring it up; bread and cheese comes in with the tea, and under the mistaken impression that this constitutes the Persian evening meal I eat sufficient to satisfy my hunger. While thus partaking freely of the bread and cheese, I do not fail to notice that the others partake very sparingly, and that they seem to be rather astonished because I am not following their example. Being chiefly interested in satisfying my appetite, however, their silent observations have no effect save to further mystify my understanding of the Persian character. The secret of all this soon reveals itself in the form of an ample repast of savory chicken pillau, brought in immediately afterward; and while the Pasha Khan and his two sons proceed to do full justice to this highly acceptable dish, I have to content myself with nibbling at a piece of chicken, and ruminating on the unhappy and ludicrous mistake of having satisfied my hunger with dry bread and cheese. Thus does one pay the penalty of being unacquainted with the domestic customs of a country when first entering upon its experiences. There seems to be no material difference between the social position of the women here and in Turkey; they eat their meals by themselves, and occupy entirely separate apartments, which are unapproachable to members of the opposite sex save their husbands. The Pasha Khan of Ovahjik, however, seems to be a kind, indulgent husband and father, requesting me next morning to ride up and down the brick-paved walk for the benefit of his wives and daughters. In the seclusion of their own walled premises the Persian females are evidently not so particular about concealing their features, and I obtained a glimpse of some very pretty faces; oval faces with large dreamy black eyes, and a flush of warm sunset on brownish cheeks. The indoor costume of Persian women is but an inconsiderable improvement upon the costume of our ancestress in the garden of Eden, and over this they hastily don a flimsy shawl-like garment to come out and see me ride. They are always much less concerned about concealing their nether extremities than about their faces, and as they seem but little concerned about anything on this occasion save the bicycle, after riding for them I have to congratulate myself that, so far as sight-seeing is concerned, the ladies leave me rather under obligations than otherwise.
After supper the Pasha Khan’s falconer brings in several fine falcons for my inspection, and in reply to questions concerning one with his eyelids tied up in what appears to be a cruel manner, I am told that this is the customary way of breaking the spirits of the young falcons and rendering them tractable and submissive the eyelids are pierced with a hole, a silk thread is then fastened to each eyelid and the ends tied together over the head, sufficiently tight to prevent them opening their eyes. Falconing is considered the chief out-door sport of the Persian nobility, but the average Persian is altogether too indolent for out-door sport, and the keeping of falcons is fashionable, because regarded as a sign of rank and nobility rather than for sport. In the morning the Pasha Khan is wonderfully agreeable, and appears anxious to atone as far as possible for the little incivility of yesterday evening, and to remove any unfavorable impressions I may perchance entertain of him on that account before I leave. His two sons and a couple of soldiers accompany me on horseback some distance up the valley. The valley is studded with villages, and at the second one we halt at the residence of a gentleman named Abbas Koola Khan, and partake of tea and light refreshments in his garden. Here I learn that the Pasha Khan has carried his good intentions to the extent of having made arrangements to provide me armed escort from point to point; how far ahead this well-meaning arrangement is to extend I am unable to understand; neither do I care to find out, being already pretty well convinced that the escort will prove an insufferable nuisance to be gotten rid of at the first favorable opportunity. Abbas Koola Khan now joins the company until we arrive at the summit of a knoll commanding an extensive view of my road ahead so they can stand and watch me when they all bid me farewell save the soldier who is to accompany me further on. As we shake hands, the young man whom I pushed into the irrigating ditch, points to a similar receptacle near by and shakes his head with amusing solemnity; whether this is expressive of his sorrow that I should have pushed him in, or that he should have annoyed me to the extent of having deserved it, I cannot say; probably the latter. My escort, though a soldier, is dressed but little different from the better-class villagers; he is an almond-eyed individual, with more of the Tartar cast of countenance than the Persian. Besides the short Persian sword, he is armed with a Martini Henry rifle of the 1862 pattern; numbers of these rifles having found their way into the hands of Turks, Koords and Persians, since the RussoTurkish war. My predictions concerning his turning out an insupportable nuisance are not suffered to remain long unverified, for he appears to consider it his chief duty to gallop ahead and notify the villagers of my approach, and to work them up to the highest expectations concerning my marvellous appearance. The result of all this is a swelling of his own importance at having so wonderful a person under his protection, and my own transformation from an unostentatious traveller to something akin to a free circus for crowds of barelegged ryots. I soon discover that, with characteristic Persian truthfulness, he has likewise been spreading the interesting report that I am journeying in this extraordinary manner to carry a message from the “Ingilis Shah ” to the “Shah in Shah of Iran ” (the Persians know their own country as Iran) thereby increasing his own importance and the wonderment of the people concerning myself. The Persian villages, so far, are little different from the Turkish, but such valuable property as melon-gardens, vineyards, etc., instead of being presided over by a watchman, are usually surrounded by substantial mud walls ten or twelve feet high. The villagers themselves, being less improvident and altogether more thoughtful of number one than the Turks, are on the whole, a trifle less ragged; but that is saying very little indeed, and their condition is anything but enviable. During the summer they fare comparatively well, needing but little clothing, and they are happy and contented in the absence of actual suffering; they are perfectly satisfied with a diet of bread and fruit and cucumbers, rarely tasting meat of any kind. But fuel is as scarce as in Asia Minor, and like the Turks and Armenians, in winter they have resource to a peculiar and economical arrangement to keep themselves warm; placing a pan of burning tezek beneath a low table, the whole family huddle around it, covering the table and themselves -save of course their heads-up with quilts; facing each other in this ridiculous manner, they chat and while away the dreary days of winter.
At the third village after leaving the sons of the Pasha Khan, my Tartar- eyed escort, with much garrulous injunction to his successor, delivers me over to another soldier, himself returning back; this is my favorable opportunity, and soon after leaving the village I bid my valiant protector return. The man seems totally unable to comprehend why I should order him to leave me, and makes an elaborate display of his pantomimic abilities to impress upon me the information that the country ahead is full of very bad Koords, who will kill and rob me if I venture among them unprotected by a soldier. The expressive action of drawing the finger across the throat appears to be the favorite method of signifying personal danger among all these people; but I already understand that the Persians live in deadly fear of the nomad Koords. Consequently his warnings, although evidently sincere, fall on biased ears, and I peremptorily order him to depart. The Tabreez trail is now easily followed without a guide, and with a sense of perfect freedom and unrestraint, that is destroyed by having a horseman cantering alongside one, I push ahead, finding the roads variable, and passing through several villages during the day. The chief concern of the ryots is to detain me until they can bring the resident Khan to see me ride, evidently from a servile desire to cater to his pleasure. They gather around me and prevent my departure until he arrives. An appeal to the revolver will invariably secure my release, but one naturally gets ashamed of threatening people’s lives even under the exasperating circumstances of a forcible detention. Once to-day I managed to outwit them beautifully. Pretending acquiescence in their proposition of waiting till the arrival of their Khan, I propose mounting and riding a few yards for their own edification while waiting; in their eagerness to see they readily fall into the trap, and the next minute sees me flying down the road with a swarm of bare-legged ryots in full chase after me, yelling for me to stop. Fortunately, they have no horses handy, but some of these lanky fellows can run like deer almost, and nothing but an excellent piece of road enables me to outdistance my pursuers. Wily as the Persians are, compared to the Osmanlis, one could play this game on them quite frequently, owing to their eagerness to see the bicycle ridden; but it is seldom that the road is sufficiently smooth to justify the attempt. I was gratified to learn from the Persian consul at Erzeroum that my stock of Turkish would answer me as far as Teheran, the people west of the capital speaking a dialect known as Tabreez Turkish; still, I find quite a difference. Almost every Persian points to the bicycle and says: “Boo; ndmi ndder. ” (“This; what is it?”) and it is several days ere I have an opportunity of finding out exactly what they mean. They are also exceedingly prolific in using the endearing term of kardash when accosting me. The distance is now reckoned by farsakhs (roughly, four miles) instead of hours; but, although the farsakh is a more tangible and comprehensive measurement than the Turkish hour, in reality it is almost as unreliable to go by. Towards evening I ascend into a more mountainous region, inhabited exclusively by nomad Koords; from points of vantage their tents are observable clustered here and there at the bases of the mountains. Descending into a grassy valley or depression, I find myself in close proximity to several different camps, and eagerly avail myself of the opportunity to pass a night among them. I am now in the heart of Northern Koordistan, which embraces both Persian and Turkish territory, and the occasion is most opportune for seeing something of these wild nomads in their own mountain pastures. The greensward is ridable, and I dismount before the Sheikh’s tent in the presence of a highly interested and interesting audience. The half-wild dogs make themselves equally interesting in another and a less desirable sense as I approach, but the men pelt them with stones, and when I dismount they conduct me and the bicycle at once into the tent of their chieftain. The Sheikh’s tent is capacious enough to shelter a regiment almost, and it is divided into compartments similar to a previous description; the Sheikh is a big, burly fellow, of about forty-five, wearing a turban the size of a half-bushel measure, and dressed pretty much like a well-to-do Turk; as a matter of fact, the Koords admire the Osmanlis and despise the Persians. The bicycle is reclined against a carpet partition, and after the customary interchange of questions, a splendid fellow, who must be six feet six inches tall, and broad-shouldered in proportion, squats himself cross-legged beside me, and proceeds to make himself agreeable, rolling me cigarettes, asking questions, and curiously investigating anything about me that strikes him as peculiar. I show them, among other things, a cabinet photograph of myself in all the glory of needle-pointed mustache and dress-parade apparel; after a critical examination and a brief conference among themselves they pronounce me an “English Pasha.” I then hand the Sheikh a set of sketches, but they are not sufficiently civilized to appreciate the sketches; they hold them upside down and sidewise; and not being able to make anything out of them, the Sheikh holds them in his hand and looks quite embarrassed, like a person in possession of something he doesn’t know what to do with. Noticing that the women are regarding these proceedings with much interest from behind a low partition, and not having yet become reconciled to the Mohammedan idea of women being habitually ignored and overlooked, I venture upon taking the photograph to them; they seem much confused at finding themselves the object of direct attention, and they appear several degrees wilder than the men, so far as comprehending such a product of civilization as a photograph is an indication. It requires more material objects than sketches and photos to meet the appreciation of these semi- civilized children of the desert. They bring me their guns and spears to look at and pronounce upon, and then my stalwart entertainer grows inquisitive about my revolver. First extracting the cartridges to prevent accident, I hand it to him, and he takes it for the Sheikh’s inspection. The Sheikh examines the handsome little Smith & Wesson long and wistfully, and then toys with it several minutes, apparently reluctant about having to return it; finally he asks me to give him a cartridge and let him go out and test its accuracy. I am getting a trifle uneasy at his evident covetousness of the revolver, and in this request I see my opportunity of giving him to understand that it would be a useless weapon for him to possess, by telling him I have but a few cartridges and that others are not procurable in Koordistan or neighboring countries. Recognizing immediately its uselessness to him under such circumstances, he then returns it without remark; whether he would have confiscated it without this timely explanation, it is difficult to say.
Shortly after the evening meal, an incident occurs which causes considerable amusement. Everything being unusually quiet, one sharp-eared youth happens to hear the obtrusive ticking of my Waterbury, and strikes a listening attitude, at which everybody else likewise begins listening; the tick, tick is plainly discernible to everybody in the compartment and they become highly interested and amused, and commence looking at me for an explanation. With a view to humoring the spirit of amusement thus awakened, I likewise smile, but affect ignorance and innocence concerning the origin of the mysterious ticking, and strike a listening attitude as well as the others. Presuming upon our interchange of familiarity, our six-foot-sixer then commences searching about my clothing for the watch, but being hidden away in a pantaloon fob, and minus a chain, it proves beyond his power of discovery. Nevertheless, by bending his head down and listening, he ascertains and announces it to be somewhere about my person; the Waterbury is then produced, and the loudness of its ticking awakes the wonder and admiration of the Koords, even to a greater extent than the Turks. During the evening, the inevitable question of Euss, Osmanli, and English crops up, and I win unanimous murmurs of approval by laying my forefingers together and stating that the English and the Osmanlis are kardash. I show them my Turkish teskeri, upon which several of them bestow fervent kisses, and when, by means of placing several stones here and there I explained to them how in 1877, the hated Muscov occupied different Mussulman cities one after the other, and was prevented by the English from occupying their dearly beloved Stamboul itself, their admiration knows no bounds. Along the trail, not over a mile from camp, a large Persian caravan has been halting during the day; late in the evening loud shouting and firing of guns announces them as prepared to start on their night’s journey. It is customary when going through this part of Koordistan for the caravan men to fire guns and make as much noise as possible, in order to impress the Koords with exaggerated ideas concerning their strength and number; everybody in the Sheikh’s tent thoroughly understands the meaning of the noisy demonstration, and the men exchange significant smiles. The firing and the shouting produce a truly magical effect upon a blood-thirsty youngster of ten or twelve summers; he becomes wildly hilarious, gamboling about the tent, and rolling over and kicking up his heels. He then goes to the Sheikh, points to me, and draws his finger across his throat, intimating that he would like the privilege of cutting somebody’s throat, and why not let him cut mine. The Sheikh and others laugh at this, but instead of chiding him for his tragical demonstration, they favor him with the same admiring glances that grown people bestow upon precocious youngsters the world over. Under these circumstances of abject fear on the one hand, and inbred propensity for violence and plunder on the other, it is really surprising to find the Koords in Persian territory behaving themselves as well as they do. Quilts are provided for me, and I occupy this same compartment of the tent, in common with several of the younger men. In the morning, before departing, I am regaled with bread and rich, new cream, and when leaving the tent I pause a minute to watch the busy scene in the female department. Some are churning butter in sheep-skin churns which are suspended from poles and jerked back and forth; others are weaving carpets, preparing curds for cheese, baking bread, and otherwise industriously employed. I depart from the Koordish camp thoroughly satisfied with my experience of their hospitality, but the cerulean waist-scarf bestowed upon me by our Hungarian friend Igali, at Belgrade, no longer adds its embellishments to my personal adornments. Whenever a favorable opportunity presents, certain young men belonging to the noble army of hangers-on about the Sheikh’s apartments invariably glide inside, and importune the guest from Frangistan for any article of his clothing that excites the admiration of their semi-civilized minds. This scarf, they were doubtless penetrating enough to observe, formed no necessary part of my wardrobe, and a dozen times in the evening, and again in the morning, I was worried to part with it, so I finally presented it to one of them. He hastily hid it away among his clothes and disappeared, as though fearful, either that the Sheikh might see it and make him return it, or that one of the chieftain’s favorites might take a fancy to it and summarily appropriate it to his own use.
Not more than five miles eastward from the camp, while trundling over a stretch of stony ground, I am accosted by a couple of Koordiah shepherds; but as the country immediately around is wild and unfrequented, save by Koords, and knowing something of their little weaknesses toward travellers under tempting, one-sided conditions, I deem it advisable to pay as little heed to them as possible. Seeing that I have no intention of halting, they come running up, and undertake to forcibly detain me by seizing hold of the bicycle, at the same time making no pretence of concealing their eager curiosity concerning the probable contents of my luggage. Naturally disapproving of this arbitrary conduct, I push them roughly away. With a growl more like the voice of a wild animal than of human beings, one draws his sword and the other picks up a thick knobbed stick that he had dropped in order to the better pinch and sound my packages. Without giving them time to reveal whether they seriously intend attacking me, or only to try intimidation, I have them nicely covered with the Smith & Wesson. They seem to comprehend in a moment that I have them at a disadvantage, and they hurriedly retreat a short distance, executing a series of gyral antics, as though expecting me to fire at their legs. They are accompanied by two dogs, tawny-coated monsters, larger than the largest mastiffs, who now proceed to make things lively and interesting around myself and the bicycle. Keeping the revolver in my hand, and threatening to shoot their dogs if they don’t call them away, I continue my progress toward where the stony ground terminates in favor of smooth camel-paths, about’ a hundred yards farther on. At this juncture I notice several other “gentle shepherds ” coming racing down from the adjacent knolls; but whether to assist their comrades in catching and robbing me, or to prevent a conflict between us, will always remain an uncertainty. I am afraid, however, that with the advantage on their side, the Koordish herdsmen rarely trouble themselves about any such uncongenial task as peace-making. Reaching the smooth ground before any of the new-comers overtake me, I mount and speed away, followed by wild yells from a dozen Koordish throats, and chased by a dozen of their dogs. Upon sober second thought, when well away from the vicinity, I conclude this to have been a rather ticklish incident; had they attacked me in the absence of anything else to defend myself with, I should have been compelled to shoot them; the nearest Persian village is about ten miles distant; the absence of anything like continuously ridable road would have made it impossible to out-distance their horsemen, and a Persian village would have afforded small security against a party of enraged Koords, after all. The first village I arrive at to-day, I again attempt the “skedaddling” dodge on them that proved so successful on one occasion yesterday; but I am foiled by a rocky “jump-off” in the road to-day. The road is not so favorable for spurting as yesterday, and the racing ryots grab me amid much boisterous merriment ere * I overcome the obstruction; they take particular care not to give me another chance until the arrival of the Khan. The country hereabouts consists of gravelly, undulating plateaus between the mountains, and well-worn camel-paths afford some excellent wheeling. Near mid-day, while laboriously ascending a long but not altogether unridable ascent, I meet a couple of mounted soldiers; they obstruct my road, and proceed to deliver themselves of voluble Tabreez Turkish, by which I understand that they are the advance guard of a party in which there is a Ferenghi (the Persian term for an Occidental). While talking with them I am somewhat taken by surprise at seeing a lady on horseback and two children in a kajaveh (mule panier) appear over the slope, accompanied by about a dozen Persians.
If I am surprised, the lady herself not unnaturally evinces even greater astonishment at the apparition of a lone wheelman here on the caravan roads of Persia; of course we are mutually delighted. With the assistance of her servant, the lady alights from the saddle and introduces herself as Mrs. E–, the wife of one of the Persian missionaries; her husband has lately returned home, and she is on the way to join him. The Persians accompanying her comprise her own servants, some soldiers procured of the Governor of Tabreez by the English consul to escort her as far as the Turkish frontier, and a couple of unattached travellers keeping with the party for company and society. A mule driver has charge of pack-mules carrying boxes containing, among other things, her husband’s library. During the course of ten minutes’ conversation the lady informs me that she is compelled to travel in this manner the whole distance to Trebizond, owing to the practical impossibility of passing through Bussian territory with the library. Were it not for this a comparatively short and easy journey would take them to Tiflis, from which point there would be steam communication with Europe. Ere the poor lady gets to Trebizond she will be likely to reflect that a government so civilized as the Czar’s might relax its gloomy laws sufficiently to allow the affixing of official seals to a box of books, and permit its transportation through the country, on condition-if they will-that it should not be opened in transit; surely there would be no danger of the people’s minds being enlightened -not even a little bit-by coming in contact with a library tightly boxed and sealed. At the frontier an escort of Turkish zaptiehs will take the place of the Persian soldiers, and at Erzeroum the missionaries will, of course, render her every assistance to Trebizond; but it is not without feelings of anxiety for the health of a lady travelling in this rough manner unaccompanied by her natural protector, that I reflect on the discomforts she must necessarily put up with between here and Erzeroum. She seems in good spirits, however, and says that meeting me here in this extraordinary manner is the “most romantic” incident in her whole experiences of missionary life in Persia. Like many another, she says, she can I scarcely conceive it possible that I am travelling without attendants and without being able to speak the languages. One of the unattached travellers gives me a note of introduction to Mohammed. Ali Khan, the Governor of Peri, a suburban village of Khoi, which I expect to reach some time this afternoon.
CHAPTER XIX.
PERSIA AND THE TABREEZ CARAVAN TRAIL.
A SHORT trundle to the summit of a sloping pass, and then a winding descent of several miles brings me to a position commanding a view of an extensive valley that looks from this distance as lovely as a dreamy vision of Paradise. An hour later and I am bowling along beneath overhanging peach and mulberry trees, following a volunteer horseman to Mohammed Ali Khan’s garden. Before reaching the garden a gang of bare-legged laborers engaged in patching up a mud wall favor me with a fusillade of stones, one of which caresses me on the ankle, and makes me limp like a Greenwich pensioner when I dismount a minute or two afterward. This is their peculiar way of complimenting a lone Ferenghi. Mohammed Ali Khan is found to be rather a moon-faced individual under thirty, who, together with his subordinate officials, are occupying tents in a large garden. Here, during the summer, they dispense justice to applicants for the same within their jurisdiction, and transact such other official business as is brought before them. In Persi, the distribution of justice consists chiefly in the officials ruthlessly looting the applicants of everything lootable, and the weightiest task of the officials is intriguing together against the pocket of the luckless wight who ventures upon seeking equity at their hands. A sorrowful-visaged husbandman is evidently experiencing the easy simplicity of Persian civil justice as I enter the garden; he wears the mournful expression of a man conscious of being irretrievably doomed, while the festive Kahn and his equally festive moonshi bashi (chief secretary) are laying their wicked heads together and whispering mysteriously, fifty paces away from everybody, ever and anon looking suspiciously around as though fearful of the presence of eavesdroppers. After duly binning, a young man called Abdullah, who seems to be at the beck and call of everybody, brings forth the samovar, and we drink the customary tea of good fellowship, after which they examine such of my modest effects as take their fancy. The moonshi bashi, as becomes a man of education, is quite infatuated with my pocket map of Persia; the fact that Persia occupies so great a space on the map in comparison with the small portions of adjoining countries visible around the edges makes a powerful appeal to his national vanity, and he regards me with increased affection every time I trace out for him the comprehensive boundary line of his native Iran. After nightfall we repair to the principal tent, and Mohammed Ali Khan and his secretary consume the evening hours in the joyous occupation of alternately smoking the kalian (Persian water-pipe, not unlike the Turkish nargileh, except that it has a straight stem instead of a coiled tube), and swallowing glasses of raw arrack every few minutes; they furthermore amuse themselves by trying to induce me to follow their noble example, and in poking fun at another young man because his conscientious scruples regarding the Mohammedan injunction against intoxicants forbids him indulging with them. About eight o’clock the Khan becomes a trifle sentimental and very patriotic. Producing a pair of silver-mounted horse-pistols from a corner of the tent, and waving them theatrically about, he proclaims aloud his mighty devotion to the Shah. At nine o’clock Abdullah brings in the supper. The Khan’s vertebra has become too limp and willowy to enable him to sit upright, and he has become too indifferent to such coarse, un-spiritual things as stewed chicken and musk-melons to care about eating any, while the moonshi bashi’s affection for me on account of the map has become so overwhelming that he deliberately empties all the chicken on to my sheet of bread, leaving none whatever for himself and the phenomenal young person with the conscientious scruples.
When bedtime arrives it requires the united exertions of Abdullah and the phenomenal young man to partially undress Mohammed Ali Khan and drag him to his couch on the floor, the Kahn being limp as a dish-rag and a moderately bulky person. The moonshi bashi, as becomes an individual of lesser rank and superior mental attainments, is not quite so helpless as his official superior, but on retiring he humorously reposes his feet on the pillow and his head on nothing but the bare floor of the tent, and stubbornly refuses to permit Abdullah to alter either his pillow or his position. The phenomenal young man and myself likewise seek our respective pile of quilts, Abdullah removes the lamp, draws a curtain over the entrance of the tent, and retires.
The Persians, as representing the Shiite division of the Mohammedan religion, consider themselves by long odds the holiest people on the earth, far holier than the Turks, whom they religiously despise as Sunnites and unworthy to loose the latchets of their shoes. The Koran strictly enjoins upon them great moderation in the use of intoxicating drinks, yet certain of the Persian nobility are given to drinking this raw intoxicant by the quart daily. When asked why they don’t use it in moderation, they reply, ” What is the good of drinking arrack unless one drinks enough to become drunk and happy. ” Following this brilliant idea, many of them get ” drank and happy ” regularly every evening. They likewise frequently consume as much as a pint before each meal to create a false appetite and make themselves feel boozy while eating. In the morning the moonshi bashi, with a soldier for escort, accompanies me on horseback to Khoi, which is but about seven miles distant over a perfectly level road. Sad to say, the moonshi bashi, besides his yearning affection for fiery, untamed arrack, is a confirmed opium smoker, and after last night’s debauch for supper and “hitting the pipe ” this morning for breakfast, he doesn’t feel very dashing in the saddle; consequently I have to accommodate myself to his pace. It is the slowest seven miles ever ridden on the road by a wheelman, I think; a funeral procession is a lively, rattling affair, beside our onward progress toward the mud battlements of Khoi, but there is no help for it. Whenever I venture to the fore a little the dreamy-eyed moonshi bashi regards me with a gaze of mild reproachfulness, and sings out in a gently-chide-the-erring tone of voice: “Kardash. Kardash.” meaning ” f we are brothers, why do you seem to want to leave me.” Human nature could scarcely be proof against an appeal wherein endearment and reproach are so beautifully and harmoniously blended, and it always brings me back to a level with his horse. Reaching the suburbs of Khoi, I am initiated into a new departure – new to myself at this time – of Persian sanctimoniousness. Halting at a fountain to obtain a drink, the soldier shapes himself for pouring the water out of the earthenware drinking vessel into my hands; supposing this to be merely an indication of the Persian’s own method of drinking, I motion my preference for drinking out of the jar itself. The soldier looks appealingly toward the moonshi bashi, who tells him to let me drink, and then orders him to smash the jar. It then dawns upon my unenlightened mind, that being a Ferenghi, I should have known better than to have touched my unhallowed lips to a drinking vessel at a public fountain, defiling it by so doing, so that it must be smashed in order that the sons of the “true prophet” may not unwittingly drink from it afterward and themselves become defiled. The moonshi bashi pilots me to the residence of a certain wealthy citizen outside the city walls; this person, a mild- mannered, purring-voiced man, is seated in a room with a couple of seyuds, or descendants of the prophet; they are helping themselves from a large platter of the finest, pears, peaches, and egg plums I ever saw anywhere. The room is carpeted with costly rugs and carpets in which one’s feet sink perceptibly at every step; the walls and ceiling are artistically stuccoed, and the doors and windows are gay with stained glass. Abandoning myself to the guidance of the moonshi bashi, I ride around the garden-walks, show them the bicycle, revolver, map of Persia, etc.; like the moonshi bashi, they become deeply interested in the map, finding much amusement and satisfaction in having me point out the location of different Persian cities, seemingly regarding my ability to do so as evidence of exceeding cleverness and erudition. The untravelled Persians of the northern provinces regard Teheran as the grand idea of a large and important city; if there is any place in the whole world larger and more important, they think it may perhaps be Stamboul. The fact that Stamboul is not on my map while Teheran is, they regard as conclusive proof of the superiority of their own capital. The moonshi bashi’s chief purpose in accompanying me hither has been to introduce me to the attention of the “hoikim”; although the pronunciation is a little different from hakim, I attribute this to local brogue, and have been surmising this personage to be some doctor, who, perhaps, having graduated at a Frangistan medical college, the moonshi bashi thinks will be able to converse with me. After partaking of fruit and tea we continue on our way to the nearest gate-way of the city proper, Khoi being surrounded by a ditch and battlemented mud wall. Arriving at a large, public inclosure, my guide sends in a letter, and shortly afterward delivers me over to some soldiers, who forthwith conduct me into the presence of – not a doctor, but Ali Khan, the Governor of the city, an officer who hereabouts rejoices in the title of the “hoikim.” The Governor proves to be a man of superior intelligence; he has been Persian ambassador to France some time ago, and understands French fairly well; consequently we manage to understand each other after a fashion. Although he has never before seen a bicycle, his knowledge of the mechanical ingenuity of the Ferenghis causes him to regard it with more intelligence than an un-travelled native, and to better comprehend my journey and its object. Assisted by a dozen mollahs (priests) and officials in flowing gowns and henna-tinted beards and finger-nails, the Governor is transacting official business, and he invites me to come into the council chamber and be seated. In a few minutes the noon-tide meal is announced; the Governor invites me to dine with them, and then leads the way into the dining-room, followed by his counsellors, who form in line behind him according to their rank. The dining-room is a large, airy apartment, opening into an extensive garden; a bountiful repast is spread on yellow- checkered tablecloths on the carpeted floor; the Governor squats cross- legged at one end, the stately-looking wiseacres in flowing gowns range themselves along each side in a similar attitude, with much solemnity and show of dignity; they – at least so I fancy – evidently are anything but rejoiced at the prospect of eating with an infidel Ferenghi. The Governor, being a far more enlightened and consequently less bigoted personage, looks about him a trifle embarrassed, as if searching for some place where he can seat me in a position of becoming honor without offending the prejudices of his sanctimonious counsellors. Noticing this, I at once come to his relief by taking the position farthest from him, attempting to imitate them in their cross-legged attitude. My unhappy attempt to sit in this uncomfortable attitude – uncomfortable at least to anybody unaccustomed to it – provokes a smile from His Excellency, and he straightway orders an attendant to fetch in a chair and a small table; the counsellors look on in silence, but they are evidently too deeply impressed with their own dignity and holiness to commit themselves to any such display of levity as a smile. A portion of each dish is placed upon my table, together with a travellers’ combination knife, fork and spoon, a relic, doubtless, of the Governor’s Parisian experience. His Excellency having waited and kept the counsellors waiting until these preparations are finished, motions for me to commence eating, and then begins himself. The repast consists of boiled mutton, rice pillau with curry, mutton chops, hard-boiled eggs with lettuce, a pastry of sweetened rice-flour, musk-melons, water-melons, several kinds of fruit, and for beverage glasses of iced sherbet; of all the company I alone use knife, fork, and plates. Before each Persian is laid a broad sheet of bread; bending their heads over this they scoop up small handfuls of pillau, and toss it dextrously into their mouths; scattering particles missing the expectantly opened receptacle fall back on to the bread; this handy sheet of bread is used as a plate for placing a chop or anything else on, as a table-napkin for wiping finger-tips between courses, and now and then a piece is pulled off and eaten. When the meal is finished, an attendant waits on each guest with a brazen bowl, an ewer of water and a towel. After the meal is over the Governor is no longer handicapped by the religious prejudices of the mollahs, and leaving them he invites me into the garden to see his two little boys go through their gymnastic exercises. They are clever little fellows of about seven and nine, respectively, with large black eyes and clear olive complexions; all the time we are watching them the Governor’s face is wreathed in a fond, parental smile. The exercises consist chiefly in climbing a thick rope dangling from a cross-beam. After seeing me ride the bicycle the Governor wants me to try my hand at gymnastics, but being nothing of a gymnast I respectfully beg to be excused. While thus enjoying a pleasant hour in the garden, a series of resounding thwacks are heard somewhere near by, and looking around some intervening shrubs I observe a couple of far-rashes bastinadoing a culprit; seeing me more interested in this novel method of administering justice than in looking at the youngsters trying to climb ropes, the Governor leads the way thither. The man, evidently a ryot, is lying on his back, his feet are lashed together and held soles uppermost by means of an horizontal pole, while the farrashes briskly belabor them with willow sticks. The soles of the ryot’s feet are hard and thick as rhinoceros hide almost from habitually walking barefooted, and under these conditions his punishment is evidently anything but severe. The flagellation goes merrily and uninterruptedly forward until fifty sticks about five feet long and thicker than a person’s thumb are broken over his feet without eliciting any signals of distress from the horny-hoofed ryot, except an occasional sorrowful groan of “A-l-l-ah.” He is then loosed and limps painfully away, but it looks like a rather hypocritical limp, after all; fifty sticks, by the by, is a comparatively light punishment, several hundred sometimes being broken at a single punishment. Upon taking my leave the Governor kindly details a couple of soldiers to show me to the best caravanserai, and to remain and protect me from the worry and annoyance of the crowds until my departure from the city. Arriving at the caravanserai, my valiant protectors undertake to keep the following crowd from entering the courtyard; the crowd refuses to see the justice of this arbitrary proceeding, and a regular pitched battle ensues in the gateway. The caravanserai-jees reinforce the soldiers, and by laying on vigorously with thick sticks, they finally put the rabble to flight. They then close the caravanserai gates until the excitement has subsided. Khoi is a city of perhaps fifty thousand inhabitants, and among them all there is no one able to speak a word of English. Contemplating the surging mass of woolly-hatted Persians from the bala-khana (balcony; our word is taken from the Persian), of the caravanserai, and hearing nothing but unintelligible language, I detect myself unconsciously recalling the lines: ” Oh it was pitiful; in a whole city full–.” It is the first large city I have visited without finding somebody capable of speaking at least a few words of my own language. Locking the bicycle up, I repair to the bazaar, my watchful and zealous attendants making the dust fly from the shoulders of such unlucky wights whose eager inquisitiveness to obtain a good close look brings them within the reach of their handy staves. We are followed by immense crowds, a Ferenghi being a rara avis in Khoi, and the fame of the wonderful asp- i (horse of iron) has spread like wild-fire through the city. In the bazaar I obtain Russian silver money, which is the chief currency of the country as far east as Zendjan. Partly to escape from the worrying crowds, and partly to ascertain the way out next morning, as I intend making an early start, I get the soldiers to take me outside the city wall and show me the Tabreez road.
A new caravanserai is in process of construction just outside the Tabreez gate, and I become an interested spectator of the Persian mode of building the walls of a house; these of the new caravanserai are nearly four feet thick. Parallel walls of mud bricks are built up, leaving an interspace of two feet or thereabouts; this is filled with stiff, well-worked mud, which is dumped in by bucketsful and continually tramped by barefooted laborers; harder bricks are used for the doorways and windows. The bricklayer uses mud for mortar and his hands for a trowel; he works without either level or plumb-line, and keeps up a doleful, melancholy chant from morning to night. The mortar is handed to him by an assistant by handsful; every workman is smeared and spattered with mud from head to foot, as though glorying in covering themselves with the trade-mark of their calling.
Strolling away from the busy builders we encounter a man the “water boy of the gang”- bringing a three-gallon pitcher of water from a spring half a mile away. Being thirsty, the soldiers shout for him to bring the pitcher. Scarcely conceiving it possible that these humble mud-daubers would be so wretchedly sanctimonious, I drink from the jar, much to the disgust of the poor water-carrier, who forthwith empties the remainder away and returns with hurried trot to the spring for a fresh supply; he would doubtless have smashed the vessel had it been smaller and of lesser value. Naturally I feel a trifle conscience-stricken at having caused him so much trouble, for he is rather an elderly man, but the soldiers display no sympathy for him whatever, apparently regarding an humble water-carrier as a person of small consequence anyhow, and they laugh heartily at seeing him trotting briskly back half a mile for another load. Had he taken the first water after a Ferenghi had drank from it and allowed his fellow-workmen to unwittingly partake of the same, it would probably have fared badly with the old fellow had they found it out afterward.
Returning cityward we meet our friend, the moonshi bashi, looking me up; he is accompanied by a dozen better-class Persians, scattering friends and acquaintances of his, whom he hag collected during the day chiefly to show them my map of Persia; the mechanical beauty of the bicycle and the apparent victory over the laws of equilibrium in riding it being, in the opinion of the scholarly moonshi bashi, quite overshadowed by a map which shows Teheran and Khoi, and doesn’t show Stamboul, and which shows the whole broad expanse of Persia, and only small portions of other countries. This latter fact seems to have made a very deep impression upon the moonshi banhi’s mind; it appears to have filled him with the unalterable conviction that all other countries are insignificant compared with Persia; in his own mind this patriotic person has always believed this to be the case, but he is overjoyed at finding his belief verified – as he fondly imagines – by the map of a Ferenghi. Returning to the caravanserai, we find the courtyard crowded with people, attracted by the fame of the bicycle. The moonshi bashi straightway ascends to the bala-khana, tenderly unfolds my map, and displays it for the inspection of the gaping multitude below; while five hundred pairs of eyes gaze wonderingly upon it, without having the slightest conception of what they are looking at, he proudly traces with his finger the outlines of Persia. It is one of the most amusing scenes imaginable; the moonshi bashi and myself, surrounded by his little company of friends, occupying the bala-khana, proudly displaying to a mixed crowd of fully five hundred people a shilling map as a thing to be wondered at and admired.
After the departure of the moonshi bashi and his friends, by invitation I pay a visit of curiosity to a company of dervishes (they themselves pronounce it “darwish”) occupying one of the caravanserai rooms. There are eight of them lolling about in one small room; their appearance is disgusting and yet interesting; they are all but naked in deference to the hot weather and to obtain a little relief from the lively tenants of their clothing. Prominent among their effects are panther or leopard skins which they use as cloaks, small steel battle-axes, and huge spiked clubs. Their whole appearance is most striking and extraordinary; their long black hair is dangling about their naked shoulders; they have the wild, haggard countenances of men whose lives are being spent in debauchery and excesses; nevertheless, most of them have a decidedly intellectual expression. The Persian dervishes are a strange and interesting people; they spend their whole lives in wandering from one end of the country to another, subsisting entirely by mendicancy; yet their cry, instead of a beggar’s supplication for charity, is “huk, huk” (my right, my right); they affect the most wildly, picturesque and eccentric costumes, often wearing nothing whatever but white cotton drawers and a leopard or panther skin thrown, carelessly about their shoulders, besides which they carry a huge spiked club or steel battle-axe and an alms-receiver; this latter is usually made of an oval gourd, polished and suspended on small brass chains. Sometimes they wear an embroidered conical cap decorated with verses from the Koran, but often they wear no head-gear save the covering provided by nature. The better-class Persians have little respect for these wandering fakirs; but their wild, eccentric appearance makes a deep impression upon the simple-hearted villagers, and the dervishes, whose wits are sharpened by constant knocking about, live mostly by imposing on their good nature and credulity. A couple of these worthies, arriving at a small village, affect their wildest and most grotesque appearance and proceed to walk with stately, majestic tread through the streets, gracefully brandishing their clubs or battle- axes, gazing fixedly at vacancy and reciting aloud from the Koran with a peculiar and impressive intonation; they then walk about the village holding out their alms-receiver and shouting “huk yah huk! huk yah huk ” Half afraid of incurring their displeasure, few of the villagers refuse to contribute a copper or portable cooked provisions. Most dervishes are addicted to the intemperate use of opium, bhang (a preparation of Indian hemp), arrack, and other baleful intoxicants, generally indulging to excess whenever they have collected sufficient money; they are likewise credited with all manner of debauchery; it is this that accounts for their pale, haggard appearance. The following quotation from “In the Land of the Lion and Sun,” and which is translated from the Persian, is eloquently descriptive of the general appearance of the dervish: The dervish had the dullard air, The maddened look, the vacant stare, That bhang and contemplation give. He moved, but did not seem to live; His gaze was savage, and yet sad; What we should call stark, staring mad. All down his back, his tangled hair Flowed wild, unkempt; his head was bare; A leopard’s skin was o’er him flung; Around his neck huge beads were hung, And in his hand-ah! there’s the rub- He carried a portentous club. After visiting the dervishes I spend an hour in an adjacent tchai- khan drinking tea with my escort and treating them to sundry well-deserved kalians. Among the rabble collected about the doorway is a half-witted youngster of about ten or twelve summers with a suit of clothes consisting of a waist string and a piece of rag about the size of an ordinary pen- wiper. He is the unfortunate possessor of a stomach disproportionately large and which intrudes itself upon other people’s notice like a prize pumpkin at an agricultural fair. This youth’s chief occupation appears to be feeding melon-rinds to a pet sheep belonging to the tchai-khan and playing a resonant tattoo on his abnormally obtrusive paunch with the palms of his hands. This produces a hollow, echoing sound like striking an inflated bladder with a stuffed club; and considering that the youth also introduces a novel and peculiar squint into the performance, it is a remarkably edifying spectacle. Supper-time coming round, the soldiers show the way to an eating place, where we sup off delicious bazaar-kabobs, one of the most tasteful preparations of mutton one could well imagine. The mutton is minced to the consistency of paste and properly seasoned; it is then spread over flat iron skewers and grilled over a glowing charcoal fire; when nicely browned they are laid on a broad pliable sheet of bread in lieu of a plate, and the skewers withdrawn, leaving before the customer a dozen long flat fingers of nicely browned kabobs reposing side by side on the cake of wheaten bread-a most appetizing and digestible dish. Returning to the caravanserai, I dismiss my faithful soldiers with a suitable present, for which they loudly implore the blessings of Allah on my head, and for the third or fourth time impress upon the caravanseraijes the necessity of making my comfort for the night his special consideration. They fill that humble individual’s mind with grandiloquent ideas of my personal importance by dwelling impressively on the circumstance of my having eaten with the Governor, a fact they likewise have lost no opportunity of heralding throughout the bazaar during the afternoon. The caravanserai-jee spreads quilts and a pillow for me on the open bala-khana, and I at once prepare for sleep. A gentle-eyed and youthful seyud wearing an enormous white turban and a flowing gown glides up to my couch and begins plying me with questions. The soldiers noticing this as they are about leaving the court-yard favor him with a torrent of imprecations for venturing to disturb my repose; a score of others yell fiercely at him in emulation of the soldiers, causing the dreamy-eyed youth to hastily scuttle away again. Nothing is now to be heard all around but the evening prayers of the caravanserai guests; listening to the multitudinous cries of Allah-il-Allah around me, I fall asleep. About midnight I happen to wake again; everything is quiet, the stars are shining brightly down into the court-yard, and a small grease lamp is flickering on the floor near my head, placed there by the caravan-serai-jee after I had fallen asleep. The past day has been one full of interesting experiences; from the time of leaving the garden of Mohammed Ali Khan this morning in company with the moonshi bashi, until lulled to sleep three hours ago by the deep-voiced prayers of fanatical Mohammedans the day has proved a series of surprises, and I seem more than ever before to have been the sport and plaything of fortune; however, if the fickle goddess never used anybody worse than she has used me to-day there would be little cause for complaining.
As though to belie their general reputation of sanctimoniousness, a tall, stately seyud voluntarily poses as my guide and protector en route through the awakening bazaar toward the Tabreez gate next morning, cuffing obtrusive youngsters right and left, and chiding grown-up people whenever their inordinate curiosity appeals to him as being aggressive and impolite; one can only account for this strange condescension on the part of this holy man by attributing it to the marvellous civilizing and levelling influence of the bicycle. Arriving outside the gate, the crowd of followers are well repaid for their trouble by watching my progress for a couple of miles down a broad straight roadway admirably kept and shaded with thrifty chenars or plane-trees. Wheeling down this pleasant avenue I encounter mule-trains, the animals festooned with strings of merrily jingling bells, and camels gayly caparisoned, with huge, nodding tassels on their heads and pack-saddles, and deep-toned bells of sheet iron swinging at their throats and sides; likewise the omnipresent donkey heavily laden with all manner of village produce for the Khoi market. My road after leaving the avenue winds around the end of projecting hills, and for a dozen miles traverses a gravelly plain that ascends with a scarcely perceptible gradient to the summit of a ridge; it then descends by a precipitous trail into the valley of Lake Ooroomiah. Following along the northern shore of the lake I find fairly level roads, but nothing approaching continuous wheeling, owing to wash-outs and small streams leading from a range of mountains near by to the left, between which and the briny waters of the lake my route leads. Lake Ooroomiah is somewhere near the size of Salt Lake, Utah, and its waters are so heavily impregnated with saline matter that one can lie down on the surface and indulge in a quiet, comfortable snooze; at least, this is what I am told by a missionary at Tabreez who says he has tried it himself; and even allowing for the fact that missionaries are but human after all and this gentleman hails originally from somewhere out West, there is no reason for supposing the statement at all exaggerated. Had I heard of this beforehand I should certainly have gone far enough out of my course to try the experiment of being literally rocked on the cradle of the deep. Near midday I make a short circuit to the north, to investigate the edible possibilities of a village nestling in a cul-de-sac of the mountain foot-hills. The resident Khan turns out to be a regular jovial blade, sadly partial to the flowing bowl. When I arrive he is perseveringly working himself up to the proper pitch of booziness for enjoying his noontide repast by means of copious potations of arrack; he introduces himself as Hassan Khan, offers me arrack, and cordially invites me to dine with him. After dinner, when examining my revolver, map, etc., the Khan greatly admires a photograph of myself as a peculiar proof of Ferenghi skill in producing a person’s physiognomy, and blandly asks me to “make him one of himself,” doubtless thinking that a person capable of riding on a wheel is likewise possessed of miraculous all ’round abilities.
The Khan consumes not less than a pint of raw arrack during the dinner hour, and, not unnaturally, finds himself at the end a trifle funny and venturesome. When preparing to take my departure he proposes that I give him a ride on the bicycle; nothing loath to humor him a little in return for his hospitality, I assist him to mount, and wheel him around for a few minutes, to the unconcealed delight of the whole population, who gather about to see the astonishing spectacle of their Khan riding on the Ferenghi’s wonderful asp-i-awhan. The Khan being short and pudgy is unable to reach the pedals, and the confidence-inspiring fumes of arrack lead him to announce to the assembled villagers that if his legs were only a little longer he could certainly go it alone, a statement that evidently fills the simple-minded ryots with admiration for the Khan’s alleged newly-discovered abilities.
The road continues level but somewhat loose and sandy; the scenery around becomes strikingly beautiful, calling up thoughts of “Arabian Nights ” entertainments, and the genii and troubadours of Persian song. The bright, blue waters of Lake Ooroomiah stretch away southward to where the dim outlines of mountains, a hundred miles away, mark the southern shore; rocky islets at a lesser distance, and consequently more pronounced in character and contour, rear their jagged and picturesque forms sheer from the azure surface of the liquid mirror, the face of which is unruffled by a single ripple and unspecked by a single animate or inanimate object; the beach is thickly incrusted with salt, white and glistening in the sunshine; the shore land is mingled sand and clay of a deep-red color, thus presenting the striking and beautiful phenomena of a lake shore painted red, white, and blue by the inimitable hand of nature. A range of rugged gray mountains run parallel with the shore but a few miles away; crystal streams come bubbling lake-ward over pebble-bedded channels from sources high up the mountain slopes; villages, hidden amid groves of spreading jujubes and graceful chenars, nestle here and there in the rocky gateways of ravines; orchards and vineyards are scattered about the plain. They are imprisoned within gloomy mud walls, but, like living creatures struggling for their liberty, the fruit-laden branches extend beyond their prison-walls, and the graceful tendrils of the vines find their way through the sun-cracks and fissures of decay, and trail over the top as though trying to cover with nature’s charitable veil the unsightly works of man; and all is arched over with the cloudless Persian sky.
Beaming the roads of this picturesque region in search of victims is a most persistent and pugnacious species of fly; rollicking as the blue- bottle, and the veritable double of the green-head horsefly of the Western prairies, he combines the dash and impetuosity of the one with the ferocity and persistency of the other; but he is happily possessed of one redeeming feature not possessed by either of the above-mentioned and well-known insects of the Western world. When either of these settles himself affectionately on the end of a person’s nose, and the person, smarting under the indignity, hits himself viciously on that helpless and unoffending portion of his person, as a general thing it doesn’t hurt the fly, simply because the fly doesn’t wait long enough to be hurt; but the Lake Ooroomiah fly is a comparatively guileless insect, and quietly remains where he alights until it suits one’s convenience to forcibly remove him; for this redeeming quality I bespeak for him the warmest encomiums of fly-harassed humans everywhere. Dusk is settling down over the broad expanse of lake, plain, and mountain when I encounter a number of villagers taking donkey-loads of fruit and almonds from an orchard to their village. They cordially invite me to accompany them and accept their hospitality for the night. They are travelling toward a large area of walled orchards but a short distance to the north, and I naturally expect to find their village located among them; so, not knowing how far ahead the next village may be, I gladly accept their kindly invitation, and follow along behind. It gets dusky, then duskier, then dark; the stars come peeping out thicker and thicker, and still I am trundling with these people slowly along up the dry and stone-strewn channel of spring-time freshets, expecting every minute to reach their village, only to be as often disappointed, for over an hour, during which we travel out of my proper course perhaps four miles. Finally, after crossing several little streams, or rather; one stream several times, we arrive at our destination, and I am installed, as the guest of a leading villager, beneath a sort of open porch attached to the house. Here, as usual, I quickly become the centre of attraction for a wondering and admiring audience of half-naked villagers. The villager whose guest I become brings forth bread and cheese, some bring me grapes, others newly gathered almonds, and then they squat around in the dim religious light of primitive grease-lamps and watch me feed, with the same wondering interest and the same unconcealed delight with which youthful Londoners at the Zoological Gardens regard a pet monkey devouring their offerings of nuts and ginger-snaps. I scarcely know what to make of these particular villagers; they seem strangely childlike and unsophisticated, and moreover, perfectly delighted at my unexpected presence in their midst. It is doubtful whether their unimportant little village among the foothills was ever before visited by a Ferenghi; consequently I am to them a rara avis to be petted and admired. I am inclined to think them a village of Yezeeds or devilworshippers; the Yezeeds believe that Allah, being by nature kind and merciful, would not injure anybody under any circumstances, consequently there is nothing to be gained by worshipping him. Sheitan (Satan), on the contrary, has both the power and the inclination to do people harm, therefore they think it politic to cultivate his good-will and to pursue a policy of conciliation toward him by worshipping him and revering his name. Thus they treat the name of Satan with even greater reverence than Christians and Mohammedans treat the name of God. Independent of their hospitable treatment of myself, these villagers seem but little advanced in their personal habits above mere animals; the women are half- naked, and seem possessed of little more sense of shame than our original ancestors before the fall. There is great talk of kardash among them in reference to myself. They are advocating hospitality of a nature altogether too profound for the consideration of a modest and discriminating Ferenghi – hospitable intentions that I deem it advisable to dissipate at once by affecting deep, dense ignorance of what they are discussing.
In the morning they search the village over to find the wherewithal to prepare me some tea before my departure. Eight miles from the village I discover that four miles forward yesterday evening, instead of backward, would have brought me to a village containing a caravanserai. I naturally feel a trifle chagrined at the mistake of having journeyed eight unnecessary miles, but am, perhaps, amply repaid by learning something of the utter simplicity of the villagers before their character becomes influenced by intercourse with more enlightened people.
My course now leads over a stony plain. The wheeling is reasonably good, and I gradually draw away from the shore of Lake Ooroomiah. Melon- gardens and vineyards are frequently found here and there across the plain; the only entrance to the garden is a hole about three feet by four in the high mud wall, and this is closed by a wooden door; an arm- hole is generally found in the wall to enable the owner to reach the fastening from the outside. Investigating one of these fastenings at a certain vineyard I discover a lock so primitive that it must have been invented by prehistoric man. A flat, wooden bar or bolt is drawn into a mortise-like receptacle of the wall, open at the top; the man then daubs a handful of wet clay over it; in a few minutes the clay hardens and the door is fast. This is not a burglar-proof lock, certainly, and is only depended upon for a fastening during the temporary absence of the owner in the day-time. During the summer the owner and family not infrequently live in the garden altogether. During the forenoon the bicycle is the innocent cause of two people being thrown from the backs of their respective steeds. One is a man carelessly sitting sidewise on his donkey; the meek-eyed jackass suddenly makes a pivot of his hind feet and wheels round, and the rider’s legs as suddenly shoot upward. He frantically grips his fiery, untamed steed around the neck as he finds himself over- balanced, and comes up with a broad grin and an irrepressible chuckle of merriment over the unwonted spirit displayed by his meek and humble charger, that probably had never scared at anything before in all its life. The other case is unfortunately a lady whose horse literally springs from beneath her, treating her to a clean tumble. The poor lady sings out “Allah!” rather snappishly at finding herself on the ground, so snappishly that it leaves little room for doubt of its being an imprecation; but her rude, unsympathetic attendants laugh right merrily at seeing her floundering about in the sand; fortunately, she is uninjured. Although Turkish and Persian ladies ride a la Amazon, a position that is popularly supposed to be several times more secure than side-saddles, it is a noticeable fact that they seem perfectly helpless, and come to grief the moment their steed shies at anything or commences capering about with anything like violence.
On a portion of road that is unridable from sand I am captured by a rowdyish company of donkey-drivers, returning with empty fruit-baskets from Tabreez. They will not be convinced that the road is unsuitable, and absolutely refuse to let me go without seeing the bicycle ridden. After detaining me until patience on my part ceases to be a virtue, and apparently as determined for their purpose as ever, I am finally compelled to produce the convincing argument with five chambers and rifled barrel. These crowds of donkey-men seem inclined to be rather lawless, and scarcely a day passes lately but what this same eloquent argument has to be advanced in the interest of individual liberty. Fortunately the mere sight of a revolver in the hands of a Ferenghi has the magical effect of transforming the roughest and most overbearing gang of ryots into peaceful, retiring citizens. The plain I am now traversing is a broad, gray-looking area surrounded by mountains, and stretching away eastward from Lake Ooroomiah for seventy-five miles. It presents the same peculiar aspect of Persian scenery nearly everywhere-a general verdureless and unproductive country, with the barren surface here and there relieved by small oases of cultivated fields and orchards. The villages being built solely of mud, and consequently of the same color as the general surface, are undistinguishable from a distance, unless rendered conspicuous by trees. Laboring under a slightly mistaken impression concerning the distance to Tabreez, I push ahead in the expectation of reaching there to-night; the plain becomes more generally cultivated; the caravan routes from different directions come to a focus on broad trails leading into the largest city in Persia, and which is the great centre of distribution for European goods arriving by caravan to Trebizond. Coming to a large, scattering village, some time in the afternoon, I trundle leisurely through the lanes inclosed between lofty and unsightly mud walls thinking I have reached the suburbs of Tabreez; finding my mistake upon emerging on the open plain again, I am yet again deceived by another spreading village, and about six o’clock find myself wheeling eastward across an uncultivated stretch of uncertain dimensions. The broad caravan trail is worn by the traffic of centuries considerably below the level of the general surface, and consists of a number of narrow, parallel trails, along which swarms of donkeys laden with produce from tributary villages daily plod, besides the mule and camel caravans from a greater distance. These narrow beaten paths afford excellent wheeling, and I bowl along quite briskly. As one approaches Tabreez, the country is found traversed by an intricate network of irrigating ditches, some of them works of considerable magnitude; the embankments on either side of the road are frequently high enough to obscure a horseman. These works are almost as old as the hills themselves, for the cultivation of the Tabreez plain has remained practically an unchanged system for three thousand years, as though, like the ancient laws of the Medes and Persians, it also were made unchangeable.
About dusk I fall in with another riotous crowd of homeward-bound fruit carriers, who, not satisfied at seeing me ride past, want to stop me; one of them rushes up behind, grabs my package attached to the rear baggage-carrier, and nearly causes an overthrow; frightening him off, I spurt ahead, barely escaping two or three donkey cudgels hurled at me in pure wantonness, born of the courage inspired by a majority of twenty to one. There is no remedy for these unpleasant occurrences except travelling under escort, and the avoiding serious trouble or accident becomes a matter for every-day congratulation. At eighteen miles from the last village it becomes too dark to remain in the saddle without danger of headers, and a short trundle brings me, not to Tabreez even now, but to another village eight miles nearer. Here there is a large caravanserai. Near the entrance is a hole-in-the-wall sort of a shop wherein I espy a man presiding over a tempting assortment of cantaloupes, grapes, and pears. The whirligig of fortune has favored me today with tea, blotting-paper ekmek, and grapes for breakfast; later on two small watermelons, and at 2 P.M. blotting-paper ekmek and an infinitesimal quantity of yaort (now called mast). It is unnecessary to add that I arrive in this village with an appetite that will countenance no unnecessary delay. Two splendid ripe cantaloupes, several fine bunches of grapes, and some pears are devoured immediately, with a reckless disregard of consequences, justifiable only on the grounds of semi-starvation and a temporary barbarism born of surrounding circumstances. After this savage attack on the maivah-jee’s stock, I learn that the village contains a small tchai-khan; repairing thither I stretch myself on the divan for an hour’s repose, and afterward partake of tea, bread, and peaches. At bed-time the khan-jee makes me up a couch on the divan, locks the door
inside, blows out the light, and then, afraid to occupy the same building with such a dangerous-looking individual as myself, climbs to the roof through a hole in the wall. Eager villagers carry both myself and wheel across a bridge-less stream upon resuming my journey to Tabreez next morning; the road is level and ridable, though a trifle deep with dust and sand, and in an hour I am threading the suburban lanes of the city. Along these eight miles I certainly pass not less than five hundred pack- donkeys en route to the Tabreez market with everything, from baskets of the choicest fruit in the world to huge bundles of prickly camel-thorn and sacks of tezek for fuel. No animals in all the world, I should think, stand in more urgent need of the kindly offices of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals than the thousands of miserable donkeys engaged in supplying Tabreez with fuel; their brutal drivers seem utterly callous and indifferent to the pitiful sufferings of these patient toilers. Numbers of instances are observed this morning where the rough, ill-fitting breech-straps and ropes have literally seesawed their way through the skin and deep into the flesh, and are still rasping deeper and deeper every day, no attempt whatever being made to remedy this evil; on the contrary, their pitiless drivers urge them on by prodding the raw sores with sharpened sticks, and by belaboring them unceasingly with an instrument of torture in the shape of whips with six inches of ordinary trace-chain for a lash. As if the noble army of Persian donkey drivers were not satisfied with the refinement of physical cruelty to which they have attained, they add insult to injury by talking constantly to their donkeys while driving them along, and accusing them of all the crimes in the calendar and of every kind of disreputable action. Fancy the bitter sense of humiliation that must overcome the proud, haughty spirit of a mouse-colored jackass at being prodded in an open wound with a sharp stick and hearing himself at the same time thus insultingly addressed: “Oh, thou son of a burnt father and murderer of thine own mother, would that I myself had died rather than my father should have lived to see me drive such a brute as thou art.” yet this sort of talk is habitually indulged in by the barbarous drivers. While young, the donkeys’ nostrils are slit open clear up to the bridge-bone; this is popularly supposed among the Persians to be an improvement upon nature in that it gives them greater freedom of respiration. Instead of the well known clucking sound used among ourselves as a persuasive, the Persian makes a sound not unlike the bleating of a sheep; a stranger, being within hearing and out of sight of a gang of donkey drivers in a hurry to reach their destination, would be more likely to imagine himself in the vicinity of a flock of sheep than anything else. As is usually the case, a volunteer guide bobs serenely up immediately I enter the city, and I follow confidently along, thinking he is piloting me to the English consulate, as I have requested; instead of this he steers me into the custom-house and turns me over to the officials. These worthy gentlemen, after asking me to ride around the custom-house yard, pretend to become altogether mystified about what they ought to do with the bicycle, and in the absence of any precedent to govern themselves by, finally conclude among themselves that the proper thing would be to confiscate it. Obtaining a guide to show me to the residence of Mr. Abbott, the English consul-general, that energetic representative of Her Majesty’s government smiles audibly at the thoughts of their mystification, and then writes them a letter couched in terms of humorous reproachfulness, asking them what in the name of Allah and the Prophet they mean by confiscating a traveller’s horse, his carriage, his camel, his everything on legs and wheels consolidated into the beautiful vehicle with which he is journeying to Teheran to see the Shah, and all around the world to see everybody and everything? – ending by telling them that he never in all his consular experiences heard of a proceeding so utterly atrocious. He sends the letter by the consulate dragoman, who accompanies me back to the custom-house. The officers at once see and acknowledge their mistake; but meanwhile they have been examining the bicycle, and some of them appear to have fallen violently in love with it; they yield it up, but it is with apparent reluctance, and one of the leading officials takes me into the stable, and showing me several splendid horses begs me to take my choice from among them and leave the bicycle behind.
Mr. and Mrs. Abbott cordially invite me to become their guest while staying at Tabreez. To-day is Thursday, and although my original purpose was only to remain here a couple of days, the innovation from roughing it on the road, to roast duck for dinner, and breakfast in one’s own room of a morning, coupled with warnings against travelling on the Sabbath and invitations to dinner from the American missionaries, proves a sufficient inducement for me to conclude to stay till Monday, satisfied at the prospect of reaching Teheran in good season. It is now something less than four hundred miles to Teheran, with the assurance of better roads than I have yet had in Persia, for the greater portion of the distance; besides this, the route is now a regular post route with chapar- khanas (post-houses) at distances of four to five farsakhs apart. On Friday night Tabreez experienced two slight shocks of an earthquake, and in the morning Mr. Abbott points out several fissures in the masonry of the consulate, caused by previous visitations of the same undesirable nature; the earthquakes here seem to resemble the earthquakes of California in that they come reasonably mild and often. The place likewise awakens memories of the Golden State in another and more appreciative particular nowhere, save perhaps in California, does one find such delicious grapes, peaches, and pears as at ancient Taurus, a specialty for which it has been justly celebrated from time immemorial. On Saturday I take dinner with Mr. Oldfather, one of the missionaries, and in the evening we all pay a visit to Mr. Whipple and family, the consulate link-boy lighting the way before us with a huge cylindrical lantern of transparent oiled muslin called a farnooze. These lanterns are always carried after night before people of wealth or social consequence, varying in size according to the person’s idea of their own social importance. The size of the farmooze is supposed to be an index of the social position of the person or family, so that one can judge something of what sort of people are coming down the street, even on the darkest night, whenever the attendant link-boy heaves in sight with the farnooze. Some of these social indicators are the size of a Portland cement barrel, even in Persia; it is rather a smile-provoking thought to think what tremendous farnoozes would be seen lighting up the streets on gloomy evenings, were this same custom prevalent among ourselves; few of us but what could call to memory people whose farnoozes would be little smaller than brewery mash-tubs, and which would have to be carried between six-foot link-boys on a pole. Ameer-i-Nazan, the Valiat or heir apparent to the throne, and at present nominal governor of Tabreez, has seen a tricycle in Teheran, one having been imported some time ago by an English gentleman in the Shah’s service; but the fame of the bicycle excites his curiosity and he sends an officer around to the consulate to examine and report upon the difference between bicycle and tricycle, and also to discover and explain the modus operandi of maintaining one’s balance on two wheels. The officer returns with the report that my machine won’t even stand up, without somebody holding it, and that nobody but a Ferenghi who is in league with Sheitan, could possibly hope to ride it. Perhaps it is this alarming report, and the fear of exciting the prejudices of the mollahs and fanatics about him, by having anything to do with a person reported on trustworthy authority to be in league with His Satanic Majesty, that prevents the Prince from requesting me to ride before him in Tabreez; but I have the pleasure of meeting him at Hadji Agha on the evening of the first day out. Mr. Whippie kindly makes out an itinerary of the villages and chapar-khanas I shall pass on the journey to Teheran; the superintendent of the Tabreez station of the Indo-European Telegraph Company voluntarily telegraphs to the agents at Miana and Zendjan when to expect rne, and also to Teheran; Mrs. Abbott fills my coat pockets with roast chicken, and thus equipped and prepared, at nine o’clock on Monday morning I am ready for the home-stretch of the season, before going into winter quarters.
The Turkish consul-general, a corpulent gentleman whose avoirdupois I mentally jot down at four hundred pounds, comes around with several others to see me take a farewell spin on the bricked pavements of the consulate garden. Like all persons of four hundred pounds weight, the Effendi is a good-natured, jocose individual, and causes no end of merriment by pretending to be anxious to take a spin on the bicycle himself, whereas it requires no inconsiderable exertion on his part to waddle from his own residence hard by into the consulate. Three soldiers are detailed from the consulate staff to escort me through the city; en route through the streets the pressure of the rabble forces one unlucky individual into one of the dangerous narrow holes that abound in the streets, up to his neck; the crowd yell with delight at seeing him tumble in, and nobody stops to render him any assistance or to ascertain whether he is seriously hurt. Soon a poor old ryot on a donkey, happens amid the confusion to cross immediately in front of the bicycle; whack! whack! whack! come the ready staves of the zealous and vigilant soldiers across the shoulders of the offender; the crowd howls with renewed delight at this, and several hilarious hobble-de-hoys endeavor to shove one of their companions in the place vacated by the belabored ryot, in the hope that he likewise will come in for the visitation of the soldiers’ o’er- willing staves. The broad suburban road, where the people have been fondly expecting to see the bicycle light out in earnest for Teheran at a marvellous rate of speed, is found to be nothing less than a bed of loose sand and stones, churned up by the narrow hoofs of multitudinous donkeys. Quite a number of better class Persians accompany me some distance further on horseback; when taking their departure, a gentleman on a splendid Arab charger, shakes hands and says: “Good-by, my dear,” which apparently is all the English he knows. He has evidently kept his eyes and ears open when happening about the English consulate, and the happy thought striking him at the moment, he repeats, parrot-like, this term of endearment, all unsuspicious of the ridiculousness of its application in the present case.
For several miles the road winds tortuously over a range of low, stony hills, the surface being generally loose and unridable. The water-supply of Tabreez is conducted from these hills by an ancient system of kanaats or underground water-ditches; occasionally one comes to a sloping cavern leading down to the water; on descending to the depth of from twenty to forty feet, a small, rapidly-coursing stream of delicious cold water is found, well rewarding the thirsty traveller for his trouble; sometimes these cavernous openings are simply sloping, bricked archways, provided with steps. The course of these subterranean water-ways can always be traced their entire length by uniform mounds of earth, piled up at short intervals on the surface; each mound represents the excavations from a perpendicular shaft, at the bottom of which the crystal water can be seen coursing along toward the city; they are merely man-holes for the purpose of readily cleaning out the channel of the kanaat. The water is conducted underground, chiefly to avoid the waste by evaporation and absorption in surface ditches. These kanaats are very extensive affairs in many places; the long rows of surface mounds are visible, stretching for mile after mile across the plain as far as eye can penetrate, or until losing themselves among the foot-hills of some distant mountain chain; they were excavated in the palmy days of the Persian Empire to bring pure mountain streams to the city fountains and to irrigate the thirsty plain; it is in the interest of self-preservation that the Persians now keep them from falling into decay. At noon, while seated on a grassy knoll discussing the before-mentioned contents of my pockets, I am favored with a free exhibition of what a physical misunderstanding is like among the Persian ryots. Two companies of katir-jees happen to get into an altercation about something, and from words it gradually develops into blows; not blows of the fist, for they know nothing of fisticuffs, but they belabor each other vigorously with their long, thick donkey persuaders, sticks that are anything but small and willowy; it is an amusing spectacle, and seated on the commanding knoll nibbling “drum-sticks” and wish-bones, I can almost fancy myself a Roman of old, eating peanuts and watching a gladiatorial contest in the amphitheatre. The similitude, however, is not at all striking, for thick as are their quarter-staffs the Persian ryots don’t punish each other very severely. Whenever one of them works himself up to a fighting-pitch, he commences belaboring one of the others on the back, apparently always striking so that the blow produces a maximum of noise with a minimum of punishment; the person thus attacked never ventures to strike back, but retreats under the blows until his assailant’s rage becomes spent and he desists. Meanwhile the war of words goes merrily forward; perchance in a few minutes the person recently attacked suddenly becomes possessed of a certain amount of rage-inspired courage, and he in turn commences a vigorous assault upon somebody, probably his late assailant; this worthy, having become a little cooler, has mysteriously lost his late pugnacity, and now likewise retreats without once attempting to raise his own stick in self-defence. The lower and commercial class Persians are pretty quarrelsome among themselves, but they quarrel chiefly with their tongues; when they fight without sticks it is an ear-pulling, clothes-tugging, wrestling sort of a scuffle, which continues without greater injury than a torn garment until they become exhausted if pretty evenly matched, or until separated by bystanders; they never, never hurt each other unless they are intoxicated, when they sometimes use their short swords; there is no intoxication, except in private drinking-parties.
CHAPTER XX.
TABREEZ TO TEHERAN.
The wheeling improves in the afternoon, and alongside my road runs a bit of civilization in the shape of the splendid iron poles of the Indo-European Telegraph Company. Half a dozen times this afternoon I become the imaginary enemy of a couple of cavalrymen travelling in the same direction as myself; they swoop down upon me from the rear at a charging gallop, valiantly whooping and brandishing their Martini-Henrys; when they arrive within a few yards of my rear wheel they swerve off on either side and rein their fiery chargers up, allowing me to forge ahead; they amuse themselves by repeating this interesting performance over and over again. Being usually a good rider, the dash and courage of the Persian cavalryman is something extraordinary in time of peace; no more brilliant and intrepid cavalry charge on a small scale could be well imagined than I have witnessed several times this afternoon. But upon the outbreak of serious hostilities the average warrior in the Shah’s service suddenly becomes filled with a wild, pathetic yearning after the peaceful and honorable calling of a katir-jee, an uncontrollable desire to become a humble, contented tiller of the soil, or handy-man about a tchaikhan, anything, in fact, of a strictly peaceful character. Were I a hostile trooper with a red jacket, and a general warlike appearance, and the bicycle a machine gun, though our whooping, charging cavalrymen were twenty instead of two, they would only charge once, and that would be with their horses’ crimson-dyed tails streaming in the breeze toward me. The Shah’s soldiers are gentle, unwarlike creatures at heart; there are probably no soldiers in the whole world that would acquit themselves less creditably in a pitched battle; they are, nevertheless, not without certain soldierly qualities, well adapted to their country; the cavalrymen are very good riders, and although the infantry does not present a very encouraging appearance on the parade-ground, they would meander across five hundred miles of country on half rations of blotting-paper ekmek without any vigorous remonstrance, and wait uncomplainingly for their pay until the middle of next year. About five o’clock I arrive at Hadji Agha, a large village forty miles from Tabreez; here, as soon as it is ascertained that I intend remaining over night, I am actually beset by rival khan-jees, who commence jabbering and gesticulating about the merits of their respective establishments, like hotel-runners in the United States; of course they are several degrees less rude and boisterous, and more considerate of one’s personal inclinations than their prototypes in America, but they furnish yet another proof that there is nothing new under the sun. Hadji Agha is a village of seyuds, or descendants of the Prophet, these and the mollahs being the most bigoted class in Persia; when I drop into the tchai-khan for a glass or two of tea, the sanctimonious old joker with henna-tinted beard and finger-nails, presiding over the samovar, rolls up his eyes in holy horror at the thoughts of waiting upon an unhallowed Ferenghi, and it requires considerable pressure from the younger and less fanatical men to overcome his disinclination; he probably breaks the glass I drank from after my departure.
About dusk the Valiat and his courtiers arrive on horseback from Tabreez; the Prince immediately seeks my quarters at the khan, and, after examining the bicycle, wants me to take it out and ride; it is getting rather dark, however, so I put him off till morning; he remains and smokes cigarettes with me for half an hour, and then retires to the residence of the local Khan for the night. The Prince seems an amiable, easy-going sort of a person; while in my company his countenance is wreathed in a pleasant smile continually, and I fancy he habitually wears that same expression. His youthful courtiers seem frivolous young bloods, putting in most of the half-hour in showing me their accomplishments in the way of making floating rings of their cigarette smoke. Later in the evening I stroll around to the tchai-khan again; it is the gossiping-place of the village, and I find our sanctimonious seyuds indulging in uncomplimentary comments regarding the Yaliat’s conduct in hobnobbing with the Ferenghi; how bigoted these Persians are, and yet how utterly destitute of principle and moral character. In the morning the Prince sends me an invitation to come and drink tea with them before starting out; he bears the same perennial smile as yesterday evening. Although he is generally understood to be completely under the influence of the fanatical and bigoted seyuds and mollahs, who are strictly opposed to the Ferenghi and the Fereughi’s ideas of progress and civilization, he seems withal an amiable, well-disposed young man, whom one could scarce help liking personally, arid feeling sorry at the troubles in store for him ahead. He has an elder brother, the Zil-es-Sultan, now governor of the Southern Provinces; but not being the son of a royal princess, the Shah has nominated Ameer-i-Nazan as his successor to the throne. The Zil-es-Sultan, although of a somewhat cruel disposition, has proved himself a far more capable and energetic person than the Valiat, and makes no secret of the fact that he intends disputing the succession with his brother, by force of arms if necessary, at the Shah’s demise. He has, so at least it is currently reported, had his sword-blade engraved with the grim inscription, “This is for the Valiat’s head,” and has jocularly notified his inoffensive brother of the fact. The Zil-es-Sultau belongs to the party of progress; recks little of the opinions of priests and fanatics, is fond of Englishmen and European improvements, and keeps a kennel of English bull dogs. Should he become Shah of Persia, Baron Reuter’s grand scheme of railways and commercial regeneration, which was foiled by the fanaticism of the seyuds and mollahs soon after the Shah’s visit to England, may yet come to something, and the railroad rails now rusting in the swamps of the Caspian littoral may, after all, form part of a railway between the seaboard and the capital. The road for a short distance east of Hadji Agha is splendid wheeling, and the Prince and his courtiers accompany me for some two miles, finding much amusement in racing with me whenever the road permits of spurting. The country now develops into undulating upland, uncultivated and stone-strewn, except where an occasional stream, affording irrigating facilities, has rendered possible the permanent maintenance of a mud village and a circumscribed area of wheat-fields, melon-gardens, and vineyards. No sooner does one find himself launched upon the comparatively well-travelled post-route than a difference becomes manifest in the character of the people. Commercially speaking, the Persian is considerably more of a Jew than the Jew himself, and along a route frequented by travellers, the person possessing some little knowledge of the thievish ways of the country and of current prices, besides having plenty of small change, finds these advantages a matter for congratulation almost every hour of the day. The proprietor of a wretched little mud hovel, solemnly presiding over a few thin sheets of bread, a jar of rancid, hirsute butter, and a dozen half-ripe melons, affects a glum, sorrowful expression to think that he should happen to be without small change, and consequently obliged to accept the Hamsherri’s fifty kopec piece for provisions of one-tenth the value; but the mysterious frequency of this same state of affairs and accompanying sorrowful expression, taken in connection with the actual plenitude of small change in Persia, awakens suspicions even in the mind of the most confiding and uninitiated person. A peculiar system of commercial mendicancy obtains among the proprietors of melon and cucumber gardens alongside the road of this particular part of the country; observing a likely-looking traveller approaching, they come running to him with a melon or cucumber that they know to be utterly worthless, and beg the traveller to accept it as a present; delighted, perhaps with their apparent simple-hearted hospitality, and, moreover, sufficiently thirsty to appreciate the gift of a melon, the unsuspecting wayfarer tenders the crafty proprietor of the garden a suitable present of money in return and accepts the proffered gift; upon cutting it open he finds the melon unfit for anything, and it gradually dawns upon him that he has just grown a trifle wiser concerning the inbred cunningness and utter dishonesty of the Persians than he was before. Ere the day is ended the same game will probably be attempted a dozen times. In addition to these artful customers, one occasionally comes across small colonies of lepers, who, being compelled to isolate themselves from their fellows, have taken up their abode in rude hovels or caves by the road-side, and sally forth in all their hideousness to beset the traveller with piteous cries for assistance. Some of these poor lepers are loathsome in appearance to the last degree; their scanty coverings of rags and tatters conceals nothing of the ravages of their dread disease; some sit at the entrance to their hovels, stretching out their hands and piteously appealing for alms; others drop down exhausted in the road while endeavoring to run and overtake the passer-by; there is nothing deceptive about these wretched outcasts, their condition is only too glaringly apparent. Toward sundown I arrive at Turcomanchai, a large village, where in 1828, was drawn up the Treaty of Peace between Persia and Russia, which transferred the remaining Persian territory of the Caucasus into the capacious maw of the Northern Bear. It is currently reported that after depriving the Persians of their rights to the navigation of the Caspian Sea the Czar coolly gave his amiable friend the Shah a practical lesson concerning the irony of fortune by presenting him with a yacht. Seeking the guidance of a native to the caravanserai, this quick-witted individual leads the way through tortuous alleyways to the other end of the village and pilots me to the camp of a tea caravan, pitched on the outskirts, thinking I had requested to be guided to a caravan; the caravan men direct me to the chapar-khana, where accommodations of the usual rude nature are provided. Sending into the village for eggs, sugar, and tea, the chapar- khana keeper and stablemen produce a battered samovar, and after frying my supper, they prepare tea; they are poor, ragged fellows, but they seem light-hearted and contented; the siren song of the steaming samovar seems to a waken in their semi-civilized breasts a sympathetic response, and they fall to singing and making merry over tiny glasses of sweetened tea quite as naturally as sailors in a seaport groggery, or Germans over a keg of lager. Jolly, happy-go-lucky fellows though they outwardly appear, they prove no exception, however, to the general run of their countrymen in the matter of petty dishonesty; although I gave them money enough to purchase twice the quantity of provisions they brought back, besides promising them the customary small present before leaving, in the morning they make a further attempt on my purse under pretence of purchasing more butter to cook the remainder of the eggs. These are trifling matters to discuss, but they serve to show the wide difference between the character of the peasant classes in Persia and Turkey. The chapar-khana usually consists of a walled enclosure containing stabling for a large number of horses and quarters for the stablemen and station- keeper. The quickest mode of travelling in Persia is by chapar, or, in other words, on horseback, obtaining fresh horses at each chapar-khana. The country east of Turcomanchai consists of rough, uninteresting upland, with nothing to vary the monotony of the journey, until noon, when after wheeling five farsakhs I reach the town of Miana, celebrated throughout the Shah’s dominions for a certain poisonous bug which inhabits the mud walls of the houses, and is reputed to bite the inhabitants while they are sleeping. The bite is said to produce violent and prolonged fever, and to be even, dangerous to life. It is customary to warn travellers against remaining over night at Miana, and, of course, I have not by any means been forgotten. Like most of these alleged dreadful things, it is found upon close investigation to be a big bogey with just sufficient truthfulness about it to play upon the imaginative minds of the people. The “Miana bug-bear” would, I think, be a more appropriate name than Miana bug. The people here seem inclined to be rather rowdyish in their reception of a Ferenghi without an escort. While trundling through the bazaar toward the telegraph station I become the unhappy target for covertly thrown melon-rinds and other unwelcome missiles, for which there appears no remedy except the friendly shelter of the station. This is just outside the town, and before the gate is reached, stones are exchanged for melon-rinds, but fortunately without any serious damage being done. Mr. F–, a young German operator, has charge of the control-station here, and welcomes me most cordially to share his comfortable quarters, urging me to remain with him several days. I gladly accept his hospitality till tomorrow morning. Mr. F– has a brother who has recently become a Mussulman, and married a couple of Persian wives; he is also residing temporarily at Miana. He soon comes around to the telegraph station, and turns out to be a wild harum-skarum sort of a person, who regards his transformation into a Mussulman and the setting up of a harem of his own as anything but a serious affair. As a reward for embracing the Mohammedan religion and becoming a Persian subject the Shah has given him a sum of money and a position in the Tabreez mint, besides bestowing upon him the sounding title of Mirza Ab-dul Karim Khan. It seems that inducements of a like substantial nature are held out to any Ferenghi of known respectability who formally embraces the Shiite branch of the Mohammedan religion, and becomes a Persian subject – a rare chance for chronic ne’er-do-wells among ourselves, one would think.
This novel and festive convert to Islam readily gives me a mental peep behind the scenes of Persian domestic life, and would unhesitatingly have granted me a peep in person had such a thing been possible. Imagine the ordinary costume of an opera-bouffe artist, shorn of all regard for the difference between real indecency and the suggestiveness of indelicacy permissible behind the footlights, and we have the every-day costume of the Persian harem. In the dreamy eventide the lord of the harem usually betakes himself to that characteristic institution of the East and proceeds to drive dull care away by smoking the kalian and watching an exhibition of the terpsichorean talent of his wives or slaves. This does not consist of dancing, such as we are accustomed to understand the art, but of graceful posturing and bodily contortions, spinning round like a coryphee, with hand aloft, and snapping their fingers or clashing tiny brass cymbals; standing with feet motionless and wriggling the joints, or bending backward until their loose, flowing tresses touch the ground. Persians able to afford the luxury have their womens’ apartment walled with mirrors, placed at appropriate angles, so that when enjoying these exhibitions of his wives’ abilities he finds himself not merely in the presence of three or six wives, as the case may be, but surrounded on all sides by scores of airy-fairy nymphs, and amid the dreamy fumes and soothing bubble-bubbling of his kalian can imagine himself the happy – or one would naturally think, unhappy – possessor of a hundred. The effect of this mirror-work arrangement can be better imagined than described.
“You haven’t got one of those mirrored rooms, have you?” I inquire, beginning to get a trifle inquisitive, and perhaps rather impertinent. “You couldn’t manage to smuggle a fellow inside, disguised as a seyud or–” “Nicht,” replies Mirza Abdul Kaiim Khan, laughing, “I have not bothered about a mirror chamber yet, because I only remain here for another month; but if you happen to come to Tabreez any time after I get settled down there, look me up, and I’ll-hello! here comes Prince Assabdulla to see your velocipede!” Fatteh – Ali Shah, the grandfather of the present monarch, had some seventy-two sons, besides no lack of daughters. As the son of a prince inherits his father’s title in Persia, the numerous descendants of Fatteh-Ali Shah are scattered all over the empire, and royal princes bob serenely up in every town of any consequence in the country. They are frequently found occupying some snug, but not always lucrative, post under the Government. Prince Assabdulla has learned telegraphy, and has charge of the government control-station here, drawing a salary considerably less than the agent of the English company’s line. The Persian Government telegraph line consists of one wire strung on tumble-down wooden poles. It is erected alongside the splendid English line of triple wires and substantial iron poles, and the control-stations are built adjacent to the English stations, as though the Persians were rather timid about their own abilities as telegraphists, and preferred to nestle, as it were, under the protecting shadow of the English line. Prince Assabdulla has an elder brother who is Governor of Miana, and who comes around to see the bicycle during the afternoon; they both seem pleasant and agreeable fellows. “When the heat of the day has given place to cooler eventide, and the moon comes peeping over the lofty Koflan Koo Mountains, near-by to the eastward, we proceed to a large fruit-garden on the outskirts of the town, and, sitting on the roof of a building, indulge in luscious purple grapes as large as walnuts, and pears that melt away in the mouth. Mirza Abdul Karim Khan plays a German accordeon, and Prince Assabdulla sings a Persian love-song; the leafy branches of poplar groves are whispering in response to a gentle breeze, and playing hide-and-seek across the golden face of the moon, and the mountains have assumed a shadowy, indistinct appearance. It is a scene of transcendental loveliness, characteristic of a Persian moonlight night.
Afterward we repair to Mirza Abdul Kiirim Khan’s house to smoke the kalian and drink tea. His favorite wife, whom he has taught to respond to the purely Frangistan name of ” Eosie,” replenishes and lights the kalian-giving it a few preliminary puffs herself by way of getting it under headway before handing it to her husband-and then serves us with glasses of sweetened tea from the samovar. In deference to her Ferenghi brother-in-law and myself, Eosie has donned a gauzy shroud over the above-mentioned in-door costume of the Persian female. “She is a beautiful dancer,” says her husband, admiringly, “I wish it were possible for you to see her dance this evening; bat it isn’t; Eosie herself wouldn’t mind, but it would be pretty certain to leak out, and Miana being a rather fanatical place, my life wouldn’t be worth that much,” and the Khan carelessly snapped his fingers. Supper is brought up to the telegraph station. Prince Assabdulla is invited, and comes round with his servant bearing a number of cucumbers and a bottle of arrack; the Prince, being a genuine Mohammedan, is forbidden by his religion to indulge; consequently he consumes the fiery arrack in preference to some light and harmless native wine; such is the perversity of human nature.
Two princes and a khan are cantering (not khan-tering) alongside the bicycle as I pull out eastward from Miana. They accompany me to the foot- hills approaching the Koflan Koo Pass, and wishing me a pleasant journey, turn their horses’ heads homeward again. Reaching the pass proper, I find it to be an exceedingly steep trundle, but quite easy climbing compared with a score of mountain passes in Asia Minor, for the surface is reasonably smooth, and toward the summit is an ancient stone causeway. A new and delightful experience awaits me upon the summit of the pass; the view to the westward is a revelation of mountain scenery altogether new and novel in my experience, which can now scarcely be called unvaried. I seem to be elevated entirely above the surface of the earth, and gazing down through transparent, ethereal depths upon a scene of everchanging beauty. Fleecy cloudlets are floating lazily over the valley far below my position, producing on the landscape a panoramic scene of constantly changing shadows; through the ethery depths, so wonderfully transparent, the billowy gray foothills, the meandering streams fringed with green, and Miana with its blue-domed mosques and emerald gardens, present a phantasmagorical appearance, as though they themselves were floating about in the lower strata of space, and undergoing constant transformation. Perched on an apparently inaccessible crag to the north is an ancient robber stronghold commanding the pass; it is a natural fortress, requiring but a few finishing touches by man to render it impregnable in the days when the maintenance of robber strongholds were possible. Owing to its walls and battlements being chiefly erected by nature, the Persian peasantry call it the Perii-Kasr, believing it to have been built by fairies. While descending the eastern slope, I surprise a gray lizard almost as large as a rabbit, basking in the sunbeams; he briskly scuttles off into the rocks upon being disturbed.
Crossing the Sefid Rud on a dilapidated brickwork bridge, I cross another range of low hills, among which I notice an abundance of mica cropping above the surface, and then descend on to a broad, level plain, extending eastward without any lofty elevation as far as eye can reach. On this shelterless plain I am overtaken by a furious equinoctial gale; it comes howling suddenly from the west, obscuring the recently vacated Koflan Koo Mountains behind an inky veil, filling the air with clouds of dust, and for some minutes rendering it necessary to lie down and fairly hang on to the ground to prevent being blown about. First it begins to rain, then to hail; heaven’s artillery echoes and reverberates in the Koflan Koo Mountains, and rolls above the plain, seeming to shake the hailstones down like fruit from the branches of the clouds, and soon I am enveloped in a pelting, pitiless downpour of hailstones, plenty large enough to make themselves felt wherever they strike. To pitch my tent would have been impossible, owing to the wind and the suddenness of its appearance. In thirty minutes or less it is all over; the sun shines out warmly and dissipates the clouds, and converts the ground into an evaporator that envelops everything in steam. In an hour after it quits raining, the road is dry again, and across the plain it is for the most part excellent wheeling.
About four o’clock the considerable village of Sercham is reached; here, as at Hadji Aghi, I at once become the bone of contention between rival khan-jees wanting to secure me for a guest, on the supposition that I am going to remain over night. Their anxiety is all unnecessary, however, for away off on the eastern horizon can be observed clusters of familiar black dots that awaken agreeable reflections of the night spent in the Koordish camp between Ovahjik and Khoi. I remain in Sercham long enough to eat a watermelon, ride, against my will, over rough ground to appease the crowd, and then pull out toward the Koordish camps which are evidently situated near my proper course.
It seeins to have rained heavily in the mountains and not rained at all east of Sercham, for during the next hour I am compelled to disrobe, and ford several freshets coursing down ravines over beds that before the storm were inches deep in dust, the approaching slopes being still dusty; this little diversion causes me to thank fortune that I have been enabled to keep in advance of the regular rainy season, which commences a little later. Striking a Koordish camp adjacent to the trail I trundle toward one of the tents; before reaching it I am overhauled by a shepherd who hands me a handful of dried peaches from a wallet suspended from his waist. The evening air is cool with a suggestion of frostiness, and the occupants of the tent are found crouching around a smoking tezek fire; they are ragged and of rather unprepossessing appearance, but being instinctively hospitable, they shuffle around to make me welcome at the fire; at first I almost fancy myself mistaken in thinking them Koords, for there is nothing of the neatness and cleanliness of our late acquaintances about them; on the contrary, they are almost as repulsive as their sedentary relatives of Dele Baba-but a little questioning removes all doubt of their being Koords. They are simply an ill-conditioned tribe, without any idea whatever of thrift or good management. They have evidently been to Tabreez or somewhere lately, and invested most of the proceeds of the season’s shearing in three-year-old dried peaches that are hard enough to rattle like pebbles; sacksful of these edibles are scattered all over the tent serving for seats, pillows, and general utility articles for the youngsters to roll about on, jump over, and throw around; everybody in the camp seems to be chewing these peaches and throwing them about in sheer wantonness because they are plentiful; every sack contains finger-holes from which one and all help themselves ad libitum in wanton disregard of the future.
Nearly everybody seems to be suffering from ophthalmia, which is aggravated by crouching over the densely smoking tezek; and one miserable-looking old character is groaning and writhing with the pain of a severe stomach- ache. By loafing lazily about the tent all day, and chewing these flinty dried peaches, this hopeful old joker has well-nigh brought himself to the unhappy condition of the Yosemite valley mule, who broke into the tent and consumed half a bushel of dried peaches; when the hunters returned to camp and were wondering what marauder had visited their tent and stolen the peaches, they heard a loud explosion behind the tent; hastily going out they discover the remnants of the luckless mule scattered about in all directions. Of course I am appealed to for a remedy, and I am not sorry to have at last come across an applicant for my services as a hakim, for whose ailment I can prescribe with some degree of confidence; to make assurance doubly sure I give the sufferer a double dose, and in the morning have the satisfaction of finding him entirely relieved from his misery. There seems to be no order or sense of good manners whatever among these people; we have bread and half-stewed peaches for supper, and while they are cooking, ill-mannered youngsters are constantly fishing them from the kettles with weed-stalks, meeting with no sort of reproof from their elders for so doing; when bedtime arrives, everybody seizes quilts, peach-sacks, etc., and crawls wherever they can for warmth and comfort; three men, two women, and several children occupy the same compartment as myself, and gaunt dogs are nosing hungrily about among us. About midnight there is a general hallooballoo among the dogs, and the clatter of horses’ hoofs is heard outside the tent; the occupants of the tent, including myself, spring up, wondering what the disturbance is all about. A group of horsemen are visible in the bright moonlight outside, and one of them has dismounted, and under the guidance of a shepherd, is about entering the tent; seeing me spring up, and being afraid lest perchance I might misinterpret their intentions and act accordingly, he sings out in a soothing voice, “Kardash, Hamsherri; Kardash, Kardash.” thus assuring me of their peaceful intentions. These midnight visitors turn out to be a party of Persian travellers from Miana, from which it would appear they have less fear of the Koords here than in Koordistan near the frontier; having, somehow, found out my whereabouts, they have come to try and persuade me to leave the camp and join their company to Zenjan. Although my own unfavorable impressions of my entertainers are seconded by the visitors’ reiterated assurances that these Koords are bad people, I decline to accompany them, knowing the folly of attempting to bicycle over these roads by moonlight in the company of horsemen who would be continually worrying me to ride, no matter what the condition of the road; after remaining in camp half an hour they take their departure.
In the morning I discover that my mussulman hat-band has mysteriously disappeared, and when preparing to depart, a miscellaneous collection of females gather about me, seize the bicycle, and with much boisterous hilarity refuse to let me depart until I have given each one of them some money; their behavior is on the whole so outrageous, that I appeal to my patient of yesterday evening, in whose bosom I fancy I may perchance have kindled a spark of gratitude; but the old reprobate no longer has the stomach-ache, and he regards my unavailing efforts to break away from my hoi-denish tormentors with supreme indifference, as though there were nothing extraordinary in their conduct. The demeanor of these wild- eyed Koordish females on this occasion fully convinces me that the stories concerning their barbarous conduct toward travellers captured on the road is not an exaggeration, for while preventing my departure they seem to take a rude, boisterous delight in worrying me on all sides, like a gang of puppies barking and harassing anything they fancy powerless to do them harm. After I have finally bribed my freedom from the women, the men seize me and attempt to further detain me until they can send for their Sheikh to come from another camp miles away, to see me ride. After waiting a reasonable time, out of respect for their having accommodated me with quarters for the night, and no signs of the Sheikh appearing, I determine to submit to their impudence no longer; they gather around me as before, but presenting my revolver and assuming an angry expression, I threaten instant destruction to the next one laying hands on either myself or the bicycle; they then give way with lowering brows and sullen growls of displeasure. My rough treatment on this occasion compared with my former visit to a Koordish camp, proves that there is as much difference between the several tribes of nomad Koords, as between their sedentary relatives of Dele Baba and Malosman respectively; for their general reputation, it were better that I had spent the night in Sercham. A few miles from the camp, I am overtaken by four horsemen followed by several dogs and a pig; it proves to be the tardy Sheikh and his retainers, who have galloped several miles to catch me up; the Sheikh is a pleasant, intelligent fellow of thirty or thereabouts, and astonishes me by addressing me as “Monsieur;” they canter alongside for a mile or so, highly delighted, when the Sheikh cheerily sings out “Adieu, monsieur!” and they wheel about and return; had their Sheikh been in the camp I stayed at, my treatment would undoubtedly have been different. I am at the time rather puzzled to account for so strange a sight as a pig galloping briskly behind the horses, taking no notice of the dogs which continually gambol about him; but I afterward discover that a pet pig, trained to follow horses, is not an unusual thing among the Persians and Persian Koords; they are thin, wiry animals of a sandy color, and quite capable of following a horse for hours; they live in the stable with their equine companions, finding congenial occupation in rooting around for stray grains of barley; the horses and pig are said to become very much attached to each other; when on the road the pig is wont to signify its disapproval of a too rapid pace, by appealing squeaks and grunts, whereupon the horse responsively slacks its speed to a more accommodating speed for its porcine companion. The road now winds tortuously along the base of some low gravel hills, and the wheeling perceptibly improves; beyond Nikbey it strikes across the hilly country, and more trundling becomes necessary. At Nikbey I manage to leave the inhabitants in a profound puzzle by replying that I am not a Ferenghi, but an Englishman; this seems to mystify them not a little, and they commence inquiring among themselves for an explanation of the difference; they are probably inquiring yet. Fifty-eight miles are covered from the Koordish camp, and at three o’clock the blue-tiled domes of the Zendjan mosques appear in sight; these blue-tiled domes are more characteristic of Persian mosques, which are usually built of bricks, and have no lofty tapering minarets as in Turkey; the summons to prayers are called from the top of a wall or roof. When approaching the city gate, a half-crazy man becomes wildly excited at the spectacle of a man on a wheel, and, rushing up, seizes hold of the handle; as I spring from the saddle he rapidly takes to his heels; finding that I am not pursuing him, he plucks up courage, and timidly approaching, begs me to let him see me ride again. Zendjan is celebrated for the manufacture of copper vessels, and the rat-a-tat-tat of the workmen beating them out in the coppersmiths’ quarters is heard fully a mile outside the gate; the hammering is sometimes deafening while trundling through these quarters, and my progress through it is indicated by what might perhaps be termed a sympathetic wave of silence following me along, the din ceasing at my approach and commencing again with renewed vigor after I have passed.
Mr. F–, a Levantine gentleman in charge of the station here, fairly outdoes himself in the practical interpretation of genuine old-fashioned hospitality, which brooks no sort of interference with the comfort of his guest; understanding the perpetual worry a person travelling in so extraordinary a manner must be subject to among an excessively inquisitive people like the Persians, he kindly takes upon himself the duty of protecting me from anything of the kind during the day I remain over as his guest, and so manages to secure me much appreciated rest and quiet. The Governor of the city sends an officer around saying that himself and several prominent dignitaries would like very much to see the bicycle. “Very good, replies Mr. F–, “the bicycle is here, and Mr. Stevens will doubtless be pleased to receive His Excellency and the leading officials of Zendjan any time it suits their convenience to call, and will probably have no objections to showing them the bicycle.” It is, perhaps, needless to explain that the Governor doesn’t turn up; I, however, have an interesting visitor in the person of the Sheikh-ul-Islam (head of religious affairs in Zendjan), a venerable-looking old party in flowing gown and monster turban, whose hands and flowing beard are dyed to a ruddy yellow with henna. The Sheikh-ul-Islam is considered the holiest personage in Zendjan and his appearance and demeanor does not in the least belie his reputation; whatever may be his private opinion of himself, he makes far less display of sanctimoniousness than many of the common seyuds, who usually gather their garments about them whenever they pass a Ferenghi in the bazaar, for fear their clothing should become defiled by brushing against him. The Sheikh-ul-Islam fulfils one’s idea of a gentle-bred, worthy-minded old patriarch; he examines the bicycle and listens to the account of my journey with much curiosity and interest, and bestows a flattering mead of praise on the wonderful ingenuity of the Ferenghis as exemplified in my wheel.
>From Zeudjan eastward the road gradually improves, and after a dozen miles develops into the finest wheeling yet encountered in Asia; the country is a gravelly plain between a mountain chain on the left and a range of lesser hills to the right. Near noon I pass through Sultaneah, formerly a favorite country resort of the Persian monarchs; on the broad, grassy plain, during the autumn, the Shah was wont to find amusement in manoeuvring his cavalry regiments, and for several months an encampment near Sultaneah became the head-quarters of that arm of the service. The Shah’s palace and the blue dome of a large mosque, now rapidly crumbling to decay, are visible many miles before reaching the village. The presence of the Shah and his court doesn’t seem to have exerted much of a refining or civilizing influence on the common villagers; otherwise they have retrograded sadly toward barbarism again since Sultaneah has ceased to be a favorite resort. They appear to regard the spectacle of a lone Ferenghi meandering through their wretched village on a wheel, as an opportunity of doing something aggressive for the cause of Islam not to be overlooked; I am followed by a hooting mob of bare-legged wretches, who forthwith proceed to make things lively and interesting, by pelting me with stones and clods of dirt. One of these wantonly aimed missiles catches me square between the shoulders, with a force that, had it struck me fairly on the back of the neck, would in all probability have knocked me clean out of the saddle; unfortunately, several irrigating ditches crossing the road immediately ahead prevent escape by a spurt, and nothing remains but to dismount and proceed to make the best of it. There are only about fifty of them actively interested, and part of these being mere boys, they are anything but a formidable crowd of belligerents if one could only get in among them with a stuffed club; they seem but little more than human vermin in their rags and nakedness, and like vermin, the greatest difficulty is to get hold of them. Seeing me dismount, they immediately take to their heels, only to turn and commence throwing stones again at finding themselves unpursued; while I am retreating and actively dodging the showers of missiles, they gradually venture closer and closer, until things becoming too warm and dangerous, I drop the bicycle, and make a feint toward them; they then take to their heels, to return to the attack again as before, when I again commence retreating. Finally I try the experiment of a shot in the air, by way of notifying them of my ability to do them serious injury; this has the effect of keeping them at a more respectful distance, but they seem to understand that I am not intending serious shooting, and the more expert throwers manage to annoy me considerably until ridable ground is reached; seeing me mount, they all come racing pell-mell after me, hurling stones, and howling insulting epithets after me as a Ferenghi, but with smooth road ahead I am, of course, quickly beyond their reach.
The villages east of Sultaneah are observed to be, almost without exception, surrounded by a high mud wall, a characteristic giving them the appearance of fortifications rather than mere agricultural villages; the original object of this was, doubtless, to secure themselves against surprises from wandering tribes; and as the Persians seldom think of changing anything, the custom is still maintained. Bushes are now occasionally observed near the roadside, from every twig of which a strip of rag is fluttering in the breeze; it is an ancient custom still kept up among the Persian peasantry when approaching any place they regard with reverence, as the ruined mosque and imperial palace at Sultaneah, to tear a strip of rag from their clothing and fasten it to some roadside bush; this is supposed to bring them good luck in their undertakings, and the bushes are literally covered with the variegated offerings of the superstitious ryots; where no bushes are handy, heaps of small stones are indicative of the same belief; every time he approaches the well-known heap, the peasant picks up a pebble, and adds it to the pile. Owing to a late start and a prevailing head-wind, but forty-six miles are covered to-day, when about sundown I seek the accommodation of the chapar-khana, at Heeya; but, providing the road continues good, I promise myself to polish off the sixty miles between here and Kasveen, to-morrow. The chaparkhana sleeping apartments at Heeya contain whitewashed walls and reed matting, and presents an appearance of neatness and cleanliness altogether foreign to these institutions previously patronized; here, also, first occurs the innovation from “Hamsherri” to “Sahib,” when addressing me in a respectful manner; it will be Sahib, from this point clear to, through and beyond India; my various titles through the different countries thus far traversed have been; Monsieur, Herr, Effendi, Hamsherri, and now Sahib; one naturally wonders what new surprises are in store ahead. A bountiful supper of scrambled eggs (toke-mi-morgue) is obtained here, and the customary shake-down on the floor. After getting rid of the crowd I seek my rude couch, and am soon in the land of unconsciousness; an hour afterward I am awakened by the busy hum of conversation; and, behold, in the dim light of a primitive lamp, I become conscious of several pairs of eyes immediately above me, peering with scrutinizing inquisitiveness into my face; others are examining the bicycle standing against the wall at my head. Rising up, I find the chapar-lchana crowded with caravan teamsters, who, going past with a large camel caravan from the Caspian seaport of Eesht, have heard of the bicycle, and come flocking to my room; I can hear the unmelodious clanging of the big sheet-iron bells as their long string of camels file slowly past the building.
Daylight finds me again on the road, determined to make the best of early morning, ere the stiff easterly wind, which seems inclined to prevail of late, commences blowing great guns against me. A short distance out, I meet a string of some three hundred laden camels that have not yet halted after the night’s march; scores of large camel caravans have been encountered since leaving Erzeroum, but they have invariably been halting for the day; these camels regard the bicycle with a timid reserve, merely swerving a step or two off their course as I wheel past; they all seem about equally startled, so that my progress down the ranks simply causes a sort of a gentle ripple along the line, as though each successive camel were playing a game of follow-my leader. The road this morning is nearly perfect for wheeling, consisting of well-trodden camel-paths over a hard gravelled surface that of itself naturally makes excellent surface for cycling; there is no wind, and twenty-five miles are duly registered by the cyclometer when I halt to eat the breakfast of bread and a portion of yesterday evening’s scrambled eggs which I have brought along. On past Seyudoon and approaching Kasveen, the plain widens to a considerable extent and becomes perfectly level; apparent distances become deceptive, and objects at a distance assume weird, fantastic shapes; beautiful mirages hold out their allurements from all directions; the sombre walls of villages present the appearance of battlemented fortresses rising up from the mirror-like surface of silvery lakes, and orchards and groves seem shadowy, undefinable objects floating motionless above the earth. The telegraph poles traversing the plain in a long, straight line until lost to view in the hazy distance, appear to be suspended in mid-air; camels, horses, and all moving objects more than a mile away, present the strange optical illusion of animals walking through the air many feet above the surface of the earth. Long rows of kanaat mounds traverse the plain in every direction, leading from the numerous villages to distant mountain chains. Descending one of the sloping cavernous entrances before mentioned, for a drink, I am rather surprised at observing numerous fishes disporting themselves in the water, which, on the comparatively level plain, flows but slowly; perhaps they are an eyeless variety similar to those found in the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky; still they get a glimmering light from the numerous perpendicular shafts. Flocks of wild pigeons also frequent these underground water-courses, and the peasantry sometimes capture them by the hundred with nets placed over the shafts; the kanaats are not bricked archways, but merely tunnels burrowed through the ground. Three miles of loose sand and stones have to be trundled through before reaching Kasveen; nevertheless my promised sixty miles are overcome, and I enter the city gate at 2 P.M. A trundle through several narrow, crooked streets brings me to an inner gateway emerging upon a broad, smooth avenue; a short ride down this brings me to a large enclosure containing the custom-house offices and a fine brick caravanserai. Yet another prince appears here in the person of a custom-house official; I readily grant the requested privilege of seeing me ride, but the title of a Persian prince is no longer associated in my mind with greatness and importance; princes in Persia are as plentiful as counts in Italy or barons in Germany, yet it rather shocks one’s dreams of the splendor of Oriental royalty to find princes manipulating the keys of a one wire telegraph control-station at a salary of about forty dollars a month (25 tomans), or attending to the prosy duties of a small custom-house. Kasveen is important as being the half-way station between Teheran and the Caspian port of Eesht, and on the highway of travel and commerce between Northern Persia and Europe; added importance is likewise derived from its being the terminus of a broad level road from the capital, and where travellers and the mail from Teheran have to be transferred from wheeled vehicles to the backs of horses for the passage over the rugged passes of the Elburz mountains leading to the Caspian slope, or vice versa when going the other way. Locking the bicycle up in a room of the caravanserai, I take a strolling peep at the nearest streets; a couple of lutis or professional buffoons, seeing me strolling leisurely about, come hurrying up; one is leading a baboon by a string around the neck, and the other is carrying a gourd drum. Reaching me, the man with the baboon commences making the most ludicrous grimaces and causes the baboon to caper wildly about by jerking the string, while the drummer proceeds to belabor the head of his drum, apparently with the single object of extracting as much noise from it as possible. Putting my fingers to my ears I turn away; ten minutes afterward I observe another similar combination making a bee-line for my person; waving them off I continue on down the street; soon afterward yet a third party attempts to secure me for an audience. It is the custom for these strolling buffoons to thus present themselves before persons on the street, and to visit houses whenever there is occasion for rejoicing, as at a wedding, or the birth of a son; the lutis are to the Persians what Italian organ-grinders are among ourselves; I fancy people give them money chiefly to get rid of their noise and annoyance, as we do to save ourselves from the soul-harrowing tones of a wheezy crank organ beneath the window. Among the novel conveyances observed in the courtyard of the caravanserai is the takhtrowan, a large sedan chair provided with shafts at either end, and carried between two mules or horses; another is the before-mentioned kajaveh, an arrangement not unlike a pair of canvas-covered dog kennels strapped across the back of an animal; these latter contrivances are chiefly used for carrying women and children. After riding around the courtyard several different times for crowds continually coming, I finally conclude that there must be a limit to this sort of thing anyhow, and refuse to ride again; the new-comers linger around, however, until evening, in the hopes that an opportunity of seeing me ride may present itself. A number of them then contribute a handful of coppers, which they give to the proprietor of a tributary tchai-khan to offer me as an inducement to ride again. The wily Persians know full well that while a Ferenghi would scorn to accept their handful of coppers, he would probably be sufficiently amused at the circumstance to reward their persistence by riding for nothing; telling the grinning khan-jee to pocket the coppers, I favor them with “positively the last entertainment this evening.” An hour later the khan- jee meets me going toward the bazaar in search of something for supper; inquiring the object of my search, he takes me back to his tchai-khan, points significantly to an iron kettle simmering on a small charcoal fire, and bids me be seated; after waiting on a customer or two, and supplying me with tea, he quietly beckons me to the fire, removes the cover and reveals a savory dish of stewed chicken and onions: this he generously shares with me a few minutes later, refusing to accept any payment. As there are exceptions to every rule, so it seems there are individuals, even among the Persian commercial classes, capable of generous and worthy impulses; true the khan-jee obtained more than the value of the supper in the handful of coppers – but gratitude is generally understood to be an unknown commodity among the subjects of the Shah. Soon the obstreperous cries of “All Akbar, la-al-lah-il-allah” from the throats of numbers of the faithful perched upon the caravanserai steps, stable-roof, and other conspicuous soul-inspiring places, announces the