Around the World on a Bicycle - Volume II
by Thomas Stevens · English · Gutenberg #13749 · 1,041,918 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Around the World on a Bicycle - Volume II
Author: Thomas Stevens
Release date: October 14, 2004 [eBook #13749]
Most recently updated: October 28, 2024
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13749
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AROUND THE WORLD ON A BICYCLE - VOLUME II ***
AROUND THE WORLD ON A BICYCLE
Volume II.
From Teheran To Yokohama
By Thomas Stevens
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I. PAGE
THE START FROM TEHERAN, ........ 1
CHAPTER II.
PERSIA AND THE MESHED PILGRIM ROAD, ...... 34
CHAPTER III.
PERSIA AND THE MESHED PILGRIM ROAD,...... 43
CHAPTER IV.
THROUGH KHORASSAN,.......... 65
CHAPTER V.
MESHED THE HOLY,.......... 84
CHAPTER VI.
THE UNBEATEN TRACKS Of KHORASSAN,...... 109
CHAPTER VII.
BEERJAND AND THE FRONTIER OF AFGHANISTAN, .. .. 135
CHAPTER VIII
ACROSS THE "DESERT OF DESPAIR,"....... 160
CHAPTER IX.
AFGHANISTAN,............ 181
CHAPTER X.
ARRESTED AT FURRAH,......... 197
CHAPTER XI.
UNDER ESCORT TO HERAT,......... 209
CHAPTER XII.
TAKEN BACK TO PERSIA,......... 230
CHAPTER XIII.
ROUNDABOUT TO INDIA,...... 255
CHAPTER XIV.
THROUGH INDIA,........... 284
CHAPTER XV.
DELHI AND AGRA,.......... 809
CHAPTER XVI.
FROM AGRA TO SINGAPORE,........ 833
CHAPTER XVII.
THROUGH CHINA,........... 365
CHAPTER XVIII.
DOWN THE KAN-KIANG VALLEY,........ 400
CHAPTER XIX.
THROUGH JAPAN,............ 432
CHAPTER XX.
THE HOME STRETCH,.......... 451
CAMBRIDGE, MASS., April 10, 1887.
FROM TEHERAN TO YOKOHAMA.
CHAPTER I.
THE START FROM TEHERAN.
The season of 1885-86 has been an exceptionally mild winter in the
Persian capital. Up to Christmas the weather was clear and bracing,
sufficiently cool to be comfortable in the daytime, and with crisp,
frosty weather at night. The first snow of the season commenced falling
while a portion of the English colony were enjoying a characteristic
Christmas dinner of roast-beef and plum-pudding, at the house of the
superintendent of the Indo-European Telegraph Station, and during January
and February, snow-storms, cold and drizzling rains alternated with brief
periods of clearer weather. When the sun shines from a cloudless sky in
Teheran, its rays are sometimes uncomfortably warm, even in midwinter; a
foot of snow may have clothed the city and the surrounding plain in a
soft, white mantle during the night, but, asserting his supremacy on the
following morning, he will unveil the gray nakedness of the stony plain
again by noon. The steadily retreating snow line will be driven back-back
over the undulating foot-hills, and some little distance up the rugged
slopes of the Elburz range, hard by, ere he retires from view in the
evening, rotund and fiery. This irregular snow-line has been steadily
losing ground, and retreating higher and higher up the mountain-slopes
during the latter half of February, and when March is ushered in, with
clear sunny weather, and the mud begins drying up and the various
indications of spring begin to put in their appearance, I decide to make
a start. Friends residing here who have been mentioning April 15th as the
date I should be justified in thinking the unsettled weather at an end
and pulling out eastward again, agree, in response to my anxious
inquiries, that it is an open spell of weather before the regular spring
rains, that may possibly last until I reach Meshed.
During the winter I have examined, as far as circumstances have
permitted, the merits and demerits of the different routes to the Pacific
Coast, and have decided upon going through Turkestan and Southern Siberia
to the Amoor Valley, and thence either follow down the valley to
Vladivostok or strike across Mongolia to Pekin--the latter route by
preference, if upon reaching Irkutsk I find it to be practicable; if not
practicable, then the Amoor Valley route from necessity. This route I
approve of, as it will not only take me through some of the most
interesting country in Asia, but will probably be a more straightaway
continuous land-journey than any other. The distance from Teheran to
Vladivostok is some six thousand miles, and, well aware that six thousand
miles with a bicycle over Asiatic roads is a task of no little magnitude,
I at once determine upon taking advantage of the fair March weather to
accomplish at least the first six hundred miles of the journey between
Teheran and Meshed, one of the holy cities of Persia.
The bicycle is in good trim, my own health is splendid, my experience of
nearly eight thousand miles of straightaway wheeling over the roads of
three continents ought to count for something, and it is with every
confidence of accomplishing my undertaking without serious misadventure
that I set about making my final preparations to start. The British
Charge d'Affaires gives me a letter to General Melnikoff, the Russian
Minister at the Shah's court, explaining the nature and object of my
journey, and asking him to render me whatever assistance he can to get
through, for most of the proposed route lies through Russian territory.
Among my Teheran friends is Mr. M------, a lively, dapper
little telegraphist, who knows three or four different languages, and who
never seems happier than when called upon to act the part of interpreter
for friends about him.
Among other distinguishing qualities, Mr. M------shines in
Teheran society as the only Briton with sufficient courage to wear a
chimney-pot hat. Although the writer has seen the "stove-pipe" of the
unsuspecting tenderfoot from the Eastern States made short work of in a
far Western town, and the occurrence seemed scarcely to be out of place
there, I little expected to find popular sentiment running in the same
warlike groove, and asserting itself in the same destructive manner in
the little English community at Teheran. Such, however, is the grim fact,
and I have ventured to think that after this there is no disputing the
common destiny of us Anglo-Saxons, whatever clime, country, or government
may at present claim us as its own. Having seen this unfortunate
headgear of our venerable and venerated forefathers shot as full of
holes as a colander in the West, I come to the East only to find it
subjected to similar indignities here. I happen to be present at the
wanton destruction of Mr. M------'s second or third importation from
England, see it taken ruthlessly from his head, thrust through and
through with a sword-stick, and then made to play the unhappy and
undignified part of a football so long as there is anything left to kick
at. More than our common language, methinks--more than common customs and
traditions--more than all those characteristic traits that distinguish us
in common, and at the same time also distinguish us from all other
peoples--more than anything else, does this mutual spirit of
destructiveness, called into play by the sight of a stove-pipe hat, prove
the existence of a strong, resistless undercurrent of sympathy that is
carrying the most distant outposts of Anglo-Saxony merrily down the
stream of time together, to some particular end; perchance a glorious
end, perchance an ignominious end, but certainly to an end that will not
wear a stove-pipe hat.
Mr. M------'s linguistic accomplishments include a fair
knowledge of Russian, and he readily accompanies me to the Russian
Legation to interpret. The Russian Legation is situated down in the old
Oriental quarter (birds of a feather, etc.) of the city, and, for us at
least, necessitated the employment of a guide to find it. On the way
down, Mr. M------, who prides himself on a knowledge of
Russian character, impresses upon me his assurance that General Melnikoff
will turn out to be a nice, pleasant sort of a gentleman. "All the
better-class Russians are delightfully jolly and agreeable, much more
agreeable to have dealings with than the same class of people of any
other country," he says, and with these favorable comments we reach the
legation and send up my letter. After waiting what we both consider an
unnecessarily long time in the vestibule, a full-faced, sensual-looking,
or, in other words, well-to-do Persian-looking individual, in the full
costume of a Persian nobleman, comes out, bearing my letter unopened in
his hand. Bestowing upon us a barely perceptible nod, he walks straight
on past, jumps into a carriage at the door, and is driven off.
Mr. M------looks nonplussed at me, and I suppose I looked
equally nonplussed at him; anyhow, he proceeds to relieve his feelings in
language anything but complimentary to the Russian Minister. He's
the--well, I've met scores of Russians, but--him, queer! I
never saw a Russian act half as queer as this before, never!"
"Small prospect of getting any assistance from this quarter," I suggest.
"Seems deucedly like it," assents Mr. M------. "I said,
just now, that, being a Russian, he was sure to be courteous and
agreeable, if nothing else; but it seems as if there are exceptions to
this rule as to others;" and, talking together, we try to find
consolation in the thought that he may be merely eccentric, and turn out
a very good sort of fellow after all. While thus commenting, a liveried
servant presents himself and motions for us to follow him in the wake of
the departing carriage. Following his guidance a short distance through
the streets, he leads us into the court-yard of a splendid Persian
mansion, delivers us into the charge of another liveried servant, who
conducts us up a broad flight of marble stairs, at the top of which he
delivers us into the hands of yet a third flunky, who now escorts us into
the most gorgeously mirrored room it has ever been my fortune to see. The
apartment is perfectly dazzling in its glittering splendor; the floor is
of highly polished marble, the walls consist of mirror-work entirely, as
also does the lofty, domed ceiling; not plain, large squares of
looking-glass, but mirrored surfaces of all shapes and sizes, pitched at
every conceivable angle, form niches, panels, and geometrical designs--yet
each separate piece plays well its part in working out the harmonious and
decidedly pretty effect of the whole. All the furniture the large
apartment boasts is a crimson-and-gold divan or two, a few strips of rich
carpet, and an ebony stand-table, inlaid with mother-of-pearl; but
suspended from the ceiling are several magnificent cut-glass chandeliers.
At night, when these Persian mirrored rooms are lit up, they present a
scene of barbaric splendor well calculated to delight the eye of the
sumptuous Oriental; every tiny square of glass reflects a point of light,
and every larger one reproduces a chandelier; for every lamp he lights,
the Persian voluptuary finds himself surrounded by a thousand.
Seated on a divan toward one end of this splendid room, with an open box
of cigarettes before him, is the man who a few minutes ago passed us by
on the other side and drove off in his carriage. Offering us cigarettes,
he bids us be seated, and then, in very fair English (for he has once
been Persian Minister to England), introduces himself as "Nasr-i-Mulk,"
the Shah's Minister for Foreign Affairs; the same gentleman, it will be
remembered, to whom I was introduced on the morning of my appearance
before the Shah. (Vol. I.) I readily recognize him now, and he recognizes
me, and asks me when I am going to leave Teheran; but in the gloomy
vestibule of the other palace, my own memory of his face and figure was
certainly at fault. It turns out, after all, that the wretch whom we paid
to guide us to the Russian Legation, in his ignorance guided us into the
Persian Foreign Office.
"I knew--yes, dash it all! I knew he wasn't the Russian Minister the
moment I saw him," says Mr. M------as we take our departure from the
glittering room. His confidence in his knowledge of Russian character,
which a moment ago had dropped down to zero, revives wonderfully upon
discovering our ludicrous mistake, and, small as he is, it is all I can
do to keep up with him as we follow the guide Nasr-i-Mulk has kindly sent
to show us to the Russian Legation. A few minutes' walk brings us to our
destination, where we find, in the person of General Melnikoff, a
gentleman possessing the bland and engaging qualities of a good
diplomatist in a most eminent degree.
"Which is Mr. Stevens?" he exclaims, with something akin to enthusiasm,
as he advances almost to the door to meet us, his face fairly beaming
with pleasure; and, grasping me warmly by the hand, he proceeds to
express his great satisfaction at meeting a person, who had "made so
wonderful a journey," etc., etc., and etc. Never did Mr. Pickwick beam
more pleasantly at the deaf gentleman, or regard more benignantly Master
Humphrey's clock, than the Russian Minister regards the form and features
of one whom, he says, he feels "honored to meet." For several minutes we
discuss, through the medium of Mr. M------, my journey from San Francisco
to Teheran, and its proposed continuation to the Pacific; and during the
greater part, of the interview General Melnikoff holds me quite
affectionately by the hand. "Wonderful!" he says, "wonderful! nobody ever
made half such a remarkable journey; my whole heart will go with you
until your journey is completed."
Mr. M------looks on and interprets between us, with a fixed and confident
didn't-I-tell-you-so smile, that forms a side study of no mean quality.
"There will be no trouble about getting permission to go through
Turkestan?" I feel constrained to inquire; for such excessive display of
affection and bonhommie on the Russian diplomat's part could scarce fail
to arouse suspicions. "Oh dear, no!" he replies. "Oh dear, no! I will
telegraph to General Komaroff, at Askabad, to remove all obstacles, so
that nothing shall interfere with your progress." Having received this
positive assurance, we take our leave, Mr. M-------reminding me gleefully
of what he had said about the Russians being the most agreeable people on
earth, and the few remaining clouds of doubt about getting the road
through Turkestan happily dissipated by the Russian Minister's assurances
of assistance.
Searching through the bazaar, I succeed, after some little trouble, in
finding and purchasing a belt-full of Russian gold, sufficient to carry
me clear through to Japan; and on the morning of March 10th I bid
farewell to the Persian capital, well satisfied at the outlook ahead.
While packing up my traps on the evening before starting, it begins
raining for the first time in ten days; but it clears off again before
midnight, and the morning opens bright and promising as ever. Six members
of the telegraph staff have determined to accompany me out to
Katoum-abad, the first chapar-station on the Meshed pilgrim road, a
distance of seven farsakhs. "Hodge-podge," the cook, and Meshedi Ali, the
gholam, were sent ahead yesterday with plenty of substantial refreshments
and sun-dry mysterious black bottles--for it is the intention of the
party to remain at Katoum-abad overnight, and give me a proper send-off
from that point to-morrow morning.
Some little delay is occasioned by a difficulty in meeting the fastidious
tastes of some of the party as regards saddle-horses; but there is no
particular hurry, and ten o'clock finds me bowling briskly through the
suburbs toward the Doshan Tepe gate, with four Englishmen, an Irishman,
and a Welshman cantering merrily along on horseback behind.
"Khuda rail pak Kumad!" (May God sweep your road!), All Akbar had
exclaimed as I mounted at the door, and as we pass through the city gate
the old sentinel, when told that I am at last starting on the promised
journey to Meshed on the asp-i-awhan, supplements this with "Padaram
daromad!" (My father has come out!), a Persian metaphorical exclamation,
signifying that such wonderful news has had the effect of calling his
father from the grave.
The weather has changed again since early morning; it is evidently in a
very fitful and unsettled mood; the gray clouds are swirling in confusion
about the white summit of Demavend as we emerge on the level plain
outside the ramparts, and fleecy fugitives are scudding southward in wild
haste. Imperfect but ridable donkey-trails follow the dry moat around to
the Meshed road, which takes a straight course southeastward from the
city and is seen in the distance ahead, leading over a sloping pass, a
depression in the Doshan Tepe spur of the Elburz range. The road near the
city is now in better condition for wheeling than at any other time of
the year; the daily swarms of pack-animals bringing produce into Teheran
have trodden it smooth and hard during the ten days' continuous fine
weather, while it has not been dry sufficiently long to develop into
dust, as it does later in the season. Our road is level and good for
something over a farsakh, after which comes the rising ground leading
gently upward to the pass. The gradient is sufficiently gentle to be
ridable for some little distance, when it becomes too rocky and steep,
and I have to dismount and trundle to the summit. The summit of the pass
is only about nine miles from the city walls, and we pause a minute to
investigate a bottle of homemade wine from the private cellar of Mr.
North, one of our party, and to allow me to take a farewell glance at
Teheran, and the many familiar objects round about, ere riding down the
eastern slope and out of sight.
Teheran is in semi-obscurity beneath the same hazy veil observed when
first approaching it from the west, and which always seems to hover over
it. This haziness is not sufficiently pronounced to hide any conspicuous
building, and each familiar object in the city is plainly visible from
the commanding summit of the pass. The different gates of the city, each
with its little cluster of bright-tiled minars, trace at a glance the
size and contour of the outer ditch and wall; the large framework of the
pavilion beneath which the Shah gives his annual tazzia (representation
of the religious tragedy of Hussein and Hassan), denuded of its canvas
covering, suggests from this distance the naked ribs of some monster
skeleton. The square towers of the royal anderoon--which the Shah
professes to believe is the tallest dwelling-house in the
world--loom conspicuously skyward above the mass of indefinable mud
buildings and walls that characterize the habitations of humbler folk,
but perhaps happier on the whole than the fair occupants of that
seven-storied gilded prison.
Hundreds of women-wives, concubines, slaves, and domestics are understood
to be dwelling within these palace walls in charge of sable eunuchs, and
the fate of any female whose bump of discretion in an evil moment fails
her, is to be hurled headlong from the summit of one of the anderoon
towers--such, at least, is the popular belief in Teheran; it may or
may not be an exaggeration. Some even assert that the Shah's chief object
in building the anderoon so high was to have the certainty of this awful
doom ever present before its numerous inmates, the more easily to keep
them in a submissive frame of mind. Off to the right, below our position,
is the Doshan Tepe palace, a memorable spot for me, where I had the
satisfaction of first introducing bicycle-riding to the notice of the
Persian monarch. Off to the left, the Parsee "tower of silence" is
observed perched among the lonely gray hills far from human habitation or
any traversed road; on a grating fixed in the top of this tower, the
Guebre population of Teheran deposit their dead, in order that the
carrion-crows and the vultures may pick the carcass clean before they
deposit the whitened bones in the body of the tower.
Having duly investigated the bottle of wine and noticed these few
familiar objects, we all remount and begin the descent. It is a gentle
declivity from top to bottom, and ridable the whole distance, save where
an occasional washout or other small obstacle compels a dismount. The
wind is likewise favorable, and from the top of the pass the bicycle
outdistances the horsemen, except two who are riding exceptionally good
nags and make a special effort to keep up; and at two o'clock we arrive
at Katoum-abad. Katoum-abad consists of a small mud village and a
half-ruined brick caravansarai; in one of the rooms of the latter we find
"Hodge-podge" and Me-shedi Ali, with an abundance of roast chickens, cold
mutton, eggs, and the before-mentioned mysterious black bottles.
The few Persian travellers in the caravansarai and the villagers come
flocking around as usual to worry me about riding the bicycle, but the
servants drive them away in short order. "We want to see the sahib ride
the aap-i-awhan," they explain,-no doubt thinking their request most
natural and reasonable. "The sahib won't let you see it, nor ride on it
this evening," reply the servants; and, given to understand that we won't
put up with their importunities, they worry us no more. "Oh, that I could
get rid of them thus readily always!" I mentally exclaim; for I feel
instinctively that the farther east I get, the more wretchedly worrying
and inquisitive I shall find the people. We arrive hungry and thirsty,
and in condition to do ample justice to the provisions at hand. After
satisfying the pressing needs of hunger, we drink several appropriate
toasts from the contents of the mysterious black bottles--toasts for the
success of my journey, and to the bicycle that has stood by me so well
thus far on my journey, and promises to stand by me equally as well for
the future.
About four o'clock two of the company, who have been thoughtful enough to
bring shotguns along, sally forth in quest of ducks. They come plodding
wearily back again shortly after dark, without any game, but with deep
designs on the credulity of the non-sporting members of the company. In
reply to the general and stereotyped query, "Shoot anything?" one of the
erring pair replies, "Yes, we shot several canvas-backs, but lost them in
the reeds; didn't we, old un?" "Yes, five," promptly asserts "old un," a
truthful young man of about three-and-twenty summers. After this, the
silence for the space of a minute is so profound that we can hear each
other think, until one of the company, acting as spokesman for the silent
reflections of the others, inquires, "Anybody know of any reeds about
Katoum-abad?" Some one is about to reply, but sportsman No. 1 artfully
waives further examination by heaping imprecations on the unkempt head of
a dervish, who at this opportune moment commences a sing-song monotone,
in a most soul-harrowing key, outside our menzil doorway.
A slight drizzling rain is falling when the early riser of the company
wakes up and peeps out at daybreak next morning, but it soon ceases, and
by seven o'clock the ground is quite dry. The road for a mile or so is
too lumpy to admit of mounting, as is frequently the case near a village,
and my six companions accompany me to ridable ground. As I mount and
wheel away, they wave hats and send up three ringing cheers and a
"tiger," hurrahs that roll across the gray Persian plain to the echoing
hills, the strangest sound, perhaps, these grim old hills have ever
echoed; certainly, they never before echoed an English cheer.
And now, as my friends of the telegraph staff turn about and wend their
way back to Teheran, is as good a time as any to mention briefly the
manner in which these genial lightning-jerkers assisted to render my five
months' sojourn in the Persian capital agreeable. But a few short hours
after my arrival in Teheran, I was sought out by Messrs. Meyrick and
North, who no sooner learned of my intention to winter here, than they
extended a cordial invitation to join them in their already established
bachelors' quarters, where four disconsolate halves of humanity were
already messing harmoniously together. With them I took up my quarters,
and, under the liberal and wholesome gastronomic arrangements of the
establishment, soon acquired my usual semi-embon-point condition, and
recovered from that gaunt, hungry appearance that the hardships and scant
fare of the journey from Constantinople had imparted. The house belonged
to Mr. North, and he managed to give me a little room to myself for
literary work, and, under the influence of a steady stream of letters and
papers from friends and well-wishers in England and America, that snug
little apartment, with a round, moon-like hole in the thick mud wall for
a window, soon acquired the den-like aspect that seems inseparable from
the occupation of distributing ink.
Three native servants cooked for us, waited on us, turned up missing when
wanted for anything particular, cheated us and each other, swore eternal
honesty and fidelity to our faces, called us infidel dogs and pedar sags
behind our backs, quarrelled daily among themselves over their modokal
(legitimate pickings and stealings--ten per cent, on everything
passing through their hands), and meekly bore with any abuse bestowed
gratuitously upon them, for an aggregate of one hundred and thirty kerans
a month--and, of course, their modokal. Some enterprising members of
the colony had formed themselves into a club, and imported a
billiard-table from England; this, also, was installed in Mr. North's
house, and it furnished the means for many an hour of pleasant diversion.
Like all Persian houses, the house was built around a square court-yard.
Mr. North had also a pair of small white bull-dogs, named, respectively,
"Crib" and "Swindle." The last-named animal furnished us with quite an
exciting episode one February evening. He had been acting rather
strangely for two or three days; we thought that one of the servants had
been giving him a dose of bhang in revenge for having worried his kitten,
and that he would soon recover; but on this particular day, when out for
a run with his owner, his strange behavior took the form of leaping
impulsively at Mr. North, and, with seemingly wild frolic, seizing and
shaking his garments. When Mr. North returned home he took the
precautionary measure of chaining him up in the yard. Shortly afterward,
I came in from my customary evening walk, and, all unconscious of the
change in his behavior, went up to him; with a half-playful, half-savage
spring he seized the leg of my trousers, and, with an evidently
uncontrollable impulse, shook a piece clean out of it. He became
gradually worse as the evening wore away; the wild expression of his eyes
developed in an alarming manner; he would try to get at any person who
showed himself, and he made night hideous with the fearful barking howl
of a mad dog. Poor Swindle had gone mad; and I had had a narrow escape
from being bitten. We lassoed him from opposite directions and dragged
him outside and shot him. Swindle was a plucky little dog, and so was
Crib; one day they chased a vagrant cat up on to the roof; driven to
desperation, the cat made a wild leap down into the court-yard, a
distance of perhaps twenty feet; without a moment's hesitation, both dogs
sprang boldly after her, recking little of the distance to the ground and
the possibility of broken bones.
Sometimes the colony drives dull care and ennui away by indulging in
private theatricals; this winter they organized an amateur company,
called themselves the "Teheran Bulbuls," and, with burnt-corked faces and
grotesque attire, they rehearsed and perfected themselves in "Uncle
Ebenezer's Visit to New York," which, together with sundry duets, solos,
choruses, etc., they proposed to give, an entertainment for the benefit
of the poor of the city. When the Shah returned from Europe, he was moved
by what he had seen there to build a small theatre; the theatre was
built, but nothing is ever done with it. The Teheran Bulbuls applied for
its use to give their entertainment in, and the Shah was pleased to grant
their request. The mollahs raised objections; they said it would have a
tendency to corrupt the morals of the Persians. Once, twice, the
entertainment was postponed; but the Shah finally overruled the bigoted
priests' objections, and "Uncle Ebenezer's Visit to New York" was played
twice in Nasr-e-Deen's little gilded theatre a few days after I left,
with great success; the first night, before the Shah and his nobles and
the foreign ambassadors, and the second night before more common folk.
The two postponements and my early departure prevented me from being on
hand as prompter. The winter before, these dusky-faced "bul-buls" had
performed before a Teheran audience, and one who was a member at that
time tells an amusing story of the individual who acted as prompter on
that occasion. One of the performers appeared on the stage sufficiently
charged with stage-fright to cause him to entirely forget his piece.
Expecting every moment to get the cue from the prompter's box, what was
his horror to hear, after waiting what probably seemed to him about an
hour, instead of the cue, in a hoarse whisper that could be distinctly
heard all over the room, the comforting remark, "I say, Charlie, I've
lost the blooming place!"
The American missionaries have a small chapel in Teheran, and on Sunday
morning we sometimes used to go; the little congregation gathered there
was composed of strange elements collected together from far-off places.
From Colonel F ______, the grizzled military adventurer, now in the
Shah's service, and who was also with Maximilian in Mexico, to the young
American lady who is said to have turned missionary and come,
broken-hearted, to the distant East because her lover had died a few days
before they were to be married, they are an audience of people each with
a more or less adventurous history. It is perfectly natural that it
should be so; it is the irrepressible spirit of adventure that is either
directly or indirectly responsible for their presence here.
Half an hour after the echoes of the three cheers and the "tiger" have
died away finds me wet-footed and engaged in fording a series of
aggravating little streams, that obstruct my path so frequently that to
stop and shed one's foot-gear for each soon becomes an intolerable
nuisance. I should think I can lay claim, without exaggeration, to
crossing fifty of these streams inside of ten miles. A good-sized stream
emerges from the Elburz foot-hills; after reaching the plain it follows
no regular channel, but spreads out like an open fan into a gradually
widening area of small streams, that play their part in irrigating a few
scattering fields and gardens, and are then lost in the sands of the
desert to the south. Situated where it can derive the most benefit from
these streams is the village of Sherifabad, and beyond Sherifabad
stretches a verdureless waste to Aivan-i-Kaif. On this desert, I sit
down, for a few minutes, on one of those little mounds of stones piled up
at intervals to mark the road when the trail is buried beneath the winter
snows; a green-turbaned descendant of the Prophet, bestriding a bay
horse, comes from the opposite direction, stops, dismounts, squats down
on his hams close by, and proceeds to regale himself with bread and figs,
meanwhile casting fugitive glances at the bicycle. Presently he advances
closer, gives me a handful of figs, squats down closer to the bicycle,
and commences a searching investigation of its several parts.
"Where are you going?" he finally asks. "Meshed." "Where have you come
from?" "Teheran." With that he hands me another handful of figs,
remounts his horse, and rides away without another word. Inquisitiveness
is seen almost bristling from the loose sleeves and flowing folds of his
sky-blue gown, but his over-whelming sense of his own holiness forbids
him holding anything like a lengthy intercourse with an unhallowed
Ferenghi, and, much as he would like to know everything about the
bicycle, he goes away without asking a single question about it.
Shortly after parting company with the sanctimonious seyud, I encounter a
prosperous-looking party of dervishes. Some of them are mounted on
excellent donkeys, and for dervishes they look exceptionally flourishing
and well to do. As I ride slowly past, they accost me with their
customary "huk yah huk," and promise to pray Allah for a safe journey to
wherever I am going, if I will only favor them with the necessary
backsheesh to command their good offices.
There are some stretches of very good road across this desert, and I
reach Aivan-i-Kaif near noon. There has been no drinkable water for a
long distance, and, being thirsty, my first inquiry is for tea. "There is
a tchai-khan at the umbar (water-cistern), yonder," I am told, and
straightway proceed to the place pointed out; but "tchai-khan neis" is
the reply upon inquiring at the umbar. In this manner am I promptly
initiated into one peculiarity of the people along this portion of the
Meshed pilgrim road, a peculiarity that distinguishes them from the
ordinary Persian as fully as the shaking of their heads for an
affirmative reply does the people of the Maritza Valley from other people
of the Balkan Peninsula. They will frequently ask you if you want a
certain article, simply for the purpose of telling you they haven't got
it. Whether this queer inconsistency comes of simon-pure inquisitiveness,
to hear what one will say in reply, or whether they derive a certain
amount of inquisitorial pleasure from raising a person's expectations one
moment so as to witness his disappointment the next, is a question I
prefer to leave to others, but more than once am I brought into contact
with this peculiarity during the few brief hours I stay at Aivan-i-Kaif.
It is not improbable that these people are merely carrying their ideas of
politeness to the insane length of holding out the promise of what they
think or ascertain one wants, knowing at the same time their inability to
supply it.
It is threatening rain as I pick my way through a mile or so of mud
ruins, tumble-down walls, and crooked paths, leading from the umbar to
the house of the Persian telegraph-jee, who has been requested, from
Teheran, to put me up, and, in view of the threatening aspect of the
weather, I conclude to remain till morning. The English Government has
taken charge of the Teheran and Meshed telegraph-line, during the
delimitation of the Afghan and Turkestan boundary, and, besides
guaranteeing the native telegraph-jees their regular salary-which is not
always forthcoming from the Persian Government-they pay them something
extra. In consequence of this, the telegraph-jees are at present very
favorably disposed toward Englishmen, and Mirza Hassan readily tenders me
the hospitality of the little mud office where he amuses himself daily
clicking the keys of his instrument, smoking kalians, drinking tea, and
entertaining his guests. Mr. Mclntire and Mr. Stagno are somewhere
between here and Meshed, inspecting and repairing the line for the
English Government, for they received it from the Persians in a wretched,
tumble-down condition, and Mr. Gray, telegraphist for the Afghan Boundary
Commission, is stationed temporarily at Meshed, so that, thanks to the
boundary troubles, I am pretty certain of meeting three Europeans on the
first six hundred miles of my journey.
Mirza Hassan is hospitable and well meaning, but, like most Persians, he
is slow about everything but asking questions. Being a telegraph-jee, he
is, of course, a comparatively enlightened mortal, and, among other
things, he is acquainted with the average Englishman's partiality for
beer. One of the first questions he asks, is whether I want any beer. It
strikes me at once as a rather strange question to be asked in a Persian
village, but, thinking he might perchance have had a bottle or two left
here by one of the above-mentioned telegraph-inspectors, I signify my
willingness to sample a little. True to the peculiar inconsistency of his
fellows, he replies: "Ob-i-jow neis" (beer, no). If he hasn't ob-i-jow,
however, he has tea, and in about an hour after my arrival he produces
the samovar, a bowl of sugar, and the tiny glasses in which tea is always
served in Persia.
Visitors begin dropping in as usual, and, before long, hundreds of
villagers are swarming about the telegraph-khana, anxious to see me ride.
It is coming on to rain, but, in order to rid the telegraph-office of the
crowd, I take the bicycle out. Willing men carry both me and the bicycle
across a stream that runs through the village, to smooth ground on the
opposite side, where I ride back and forth several times, to the wild and
boisterous delight of the entire population.
In this manner I succeed in ridding the telegraph-office of the crowd;
but there is no getting rid of the visitors. Everybody in the place who
thinks himself a little better than the ragamuffin ryots comes and squats
on his hams in the little hut-like office, sips the telegraph-jee's
sweetened tea, smokes his kalians, and spends the afternoon in staring
wonderingly at me and the bicycle. Having picked up a little Persian
during the winter, I am able to talk with them, and understand them,
rather better than last season, and, Persian-like, they ply me
mercilessly with questions. Often, when some one asks a question of me,
Mirza Hassan, as becomes a telegraphies, and a person of profound
erudition, thoughtfully saves me the trouble of replying by undertaking
to furnish the desired information himself. One old mollah wants to know
how many farsakhs it is from Aivan-i-Kaif to Yenghi Donia (New
World-America); ere I can frame a suitable reply, Mirza Hassan forestalls
my intentions by answering, in a decisive tone of voice that admits of no
appeal, "Khylie!" "Khylie" is a handy word that the Persians always fall
back on when their knowledge of great numbers or long distances is vague
and shadowy; it is an indefinite term, equivalent to our word "many."
Mirza Hassan does not know whether America is two hundred farsakhs away
or two thousand, but he knows it to be "khylie farsakhs," and that is
perfectly satisfactory to himself, and the white-turbaned questioner is
perfectly satisfied with "khylie" for an answer.
A person from the New World is naturally a rara avis with the simple
villagers of Aivan-i-Kaif, and their inquisitiveness concerning Yenghi
Donia and Yenghi Donians fairly runs riot, and shapes itself into all
manner of questions. They want to know whether the people smoke kalians
and ride horses--real horses, not asps-i-awhans-in Yenghi Donia, and
whether the Valiat smoked the kalian with me at Hadji Agha. Mirza Hassan
explains about the kalian and horses; he enlightens his wondering
auditors to the extent that Yenghi Donians smoke nargilehs and chibouques
instead of kalians, and he contemptuously pooh-poohs the idea of them
keeping riding-horses when they are clever enough to make iron horses
that require nothing to eat or drink and no rest. About the question of
the Heir Apparent smoking the kalian with me he betrays as lively an
interest as anybody in the room, but he maintains a discreet silence
until I answer in the negative, when he surveys his guests with the air
of one who pities their ignorance, and says, "Kalian neis."
A lusty-lunged youngster of about three summers has been interrupting the
genial flow of conversation by making "Rome howl" in an adjoining room,
and Mirza Hassan fetches him in and consoles him with sundry lumps of
sugar. The advent of the limpid-eyed toddler leads the thoughts and
questions of the company into more domestic channels. After exhaustive
questioning about my own affairs, Mirza Hassan, with more than
praiseworthy frankness and becoming gravity, informs me that, besides the
embryo telegraphjee and sugar-consumer in the room, he is the happy
father of "yek nim" (one and a half others). I cast my eye around the
room at this extraordinary announcement, expecting to find the company
indulging in appreciative smiles, but every person in the room is as
sober as a judge; plainly, I am the only person present who regards the
announcement as anything uncommon.
After an ample supper of mutton pillau, Mirza Hassan proceeds to say his
prayers, borrowing my compass to get the proper bearings for Mecca, which
I have explained to him during the afternoon. With no little dismay he
discovers that, according to my explanations, he has for years been
bobbing his head daily several degrees east of the holy city, and, like a
sensible fellow, and a person who has become convinced of the
infallibility of telegraph instruments, compasses, and kindred aids to
the accomplishment of human ends, he now rectifies the mistake.
Everybody along this route uses a praying-stone, a small cake of stone or
hardened clay, containing an inscription from the Koran. These
praying-stones are obtained from the sacred soil of Meshed, Koom, or
Kerbela, and are placed in position on the ground in front of the
kneeling devotee during his devotions, so that, instead of touching his
forehead to the carpet or the common ground of his native village, he can
bring it in contact with the hallowed soil of one of these holy cities.
Distance lends enchantment to a holy place, and adds to the efficacy of a
prayer-stone in the eyes of its owner, and they are valued highly or
lightly according to the distance and the consequent holiness of the city
they are brought from. For example, a Meshedi values a prayer-stone from
Kerbela, and a Kerbeli values one from Meshed, neither of them having
much faith in the efficacy of one from his own city; familiarity with
sacred things apparently breeds doubts and indifference. The prayer-stone
is reverently touched to lips, cheeks, and forehead at the finish of
prayers, and then carefully wrapped up and stowed away until praying-time
comes round again. To a sceptical and perhaps irreverent observer, these
praying-stones would seem to bear about the same relation to a pilgrimage
to Meshed or Kerbela as a package of prepared sea-salt does to a season
at the sea-side.
CHAPTER II.
PERSIA AND THE MESHED PILGRIM ROAD
It rains quite heavily during the night, but clears off again in the
early morning, and at eight o'clock I take my departure, Mirza Hassan
refusing to allow his son and heir to accept a present in acknowledgment
of the hospitality received at his hands. The whole male population of
the village is assembled again at the spot where their experience of
yesterday has taught them I should probably mount; and the house-tops
overlooking the same spot, and commanding a view of the road across the
plain to the eastward, are crowded with women and children. The female
portion of my farewell audience present quite a picturesque appearance,
being arrayed in their holiday garments of red, blue, and other bright
colors, in honor of Friday, the Mohammedan Sabbath.
Pour miles of most excellent camel-path lead across a gravelly plain,
affording a smooth, firm, wheeling surface, notwithstanding the heavy
rains of the previous night; but beyond the plain the road leads over the
pass of the Sardara Kooh, one of the many spurs of the Elburz range that
reach out toward the south. This spur consists of saline hills that
present a very remarkable appearance in places; the rocks are curiously
honey-combed by the action of the salt, and the yellowish earthy portion
of the hills are fantastically streaked and seamed with white. A trundle
of a couple of miles brings me to the summit, from which point I am able
to mount, and, with brake firmly in hand, glide smoothly down the eastern
slope. After descending about a mile, I am met by a party of travellers
who give me friendly warning of deep water a little farther down the
mountain. After leaving them, my road follows down the winding bed of a
stream that is probably dry the greater part of the year; but during the
spring thaws, and immediately after a rain-storm, a stream of brackish,
muddy water a few inches deep trickles down the mountain and forms a most
disagreeable area of sticky salt mud at the bottom. The streak this
morning can more truthfully be described as yellow liquid mud than as
water, and both myself and wheel present anything but a prepossessing
appearance in ten minutes after starting down its grimy channel. I am,
however, congratulating myself upon finding it so shallow, and begin to
think that, in describing the water as nearly over their donkeys' backs,
the travellers were but indulging their natural propensity as subjects of
the Shah, and worthy followers in the footsteps of Ananias.
About the time I have arrived at this comforting conclusion, I am
suddenly confronted by a pond of liquid mud that bars my farther progress
down the mountain. A recent slide of land and rock has blocked up the
narrow channel of the stream, and backed up the thick yellow liquid into
a pool of uncertain depth. There is no way to get around it;
perpendicular walls of rock and slippery yellow clay rise sheer from the
water on either side. There is evidently nothing for it but to disrobe
without more ado and try the depth. Besides being thick with mud, the
water is found to be of that icy, cutting temperature peculiar to cold
brine, and after wading about in it for fifteen minutes, first finding a
fordable place, and then carrying clothes and wheel across, I emerge on
to the bank formed by the land-slip looking as woebegone a specimen of
humanity as can well be imagined. Plastered with a coat of thin yellow
mud from head to foot, chilled through and through, and shivering like a
Texas steer in a norther, feet cut and bleeding in several places from
contact with the sharp rocks, and no clean water to wash off the mud!
With the assistance of knife, pocket-handkerchief, and sundry theological
remarks which need not be reproduced here, I finally succeed in getting
off at least the greater portion of the mud, and putting on my clothes.
The discomfort is only of temporary duration; the agreeable warmth of the
after-glow exhilarates both mind and body, and with the disappearance of
the difficulty to the rear cornea the satisfaction of having found it no
harder to overcome.
A little good wheeling is encountered toward the bottom of the pass, and
then comes an area of wet salt-flats, interspersed with saline
rivulets--those innocent-looking little streamlets the deceptive clearness
of which tempts the thirsty and uninitiated wayfarer to drink. Few
travellers in desert countries but have been deceived by these
innocuous-looking streamlets once, and equally few are the people who
suffer themselves to be deceived by their smooth, pellucid aspect a
second time; for a mouthful of either strongly saline or alkaline water
from one of them creates an impression on the deceived one's palate and
his mind that guarantees him to be wariness personified for the remainder
of his life. Since a certain experience in the Bitter Creek country,
Wyoming, the writer prides himself on being able to distinguish drinkable
water from the salty or alkaline article almost as far as it can be seen,
and a stream about which the least suspicion is entertained is invariably
tasted with gingerly hesitancy to begin with.
Soon after noon I reach the village of Kishlag, where a halt of an hour
or so is made to refresh the inner man with tea, raw eggs, and
figs--a queer enough bill of fare for dinner, but no more queer than
the people from whom it is obtained. Some of my readers have doubtless
heard of the Milesian waiter who could never be brought to see any
inconsistency in asking the guests of the restaurant whether they would
take tea or coffee, and then telling them there was no tea, they would
have to take coffee. The proprietor of the little tchai-khan at Kishlag
asks me if I want coffee, and then, in strict conformity with the curious
inconsistency first discovered and spoken of at Aivan-i-Kaif, he informs
me that he has nothing but tea. The country hereabout is evidently the
birthplace of Irish bulls; when the ancestors of modern Handy Andys were
running wild on the bogs of Connemara, the people of Aivan-i-Kaif and
Kishlag were indulging in Irish bulls of the first water.
The crowd at Kishlag are good-natured and comparatively well-behaved. In
reply to their questionings, I tell them that I am journeying from Yenghi
Donia to Meshed. The New World is a far-away, shadowy realm to these
ignorant Persian villagers, almost as much out of their little,
unenlightened world as though it were really another planet; they
evidently think that in going to Meshed I am making a pilgrimage to the
shrine of Imam Riza, for some of them commence inquiring whether or no
Yenghi Donians are Mussulmans.
The weather-clerk inaugurates a regular March zephyr in the east, during
the brief halt at Kishlag; and in addition to that doubtful favor blowing
against me, the road leading out is lumpy as far as the cultivated area
extends, and then it leads across a rough, stony plain that is traversed
by a network of small streams, similar to those encountered yesterday at
Sherifabad. To the left, the abutting front of the Elburz Mountains is
streaked and frescoed with salt, that in places vies in whiteness with
the lingering-patches of snow higher up; to the right extends the gray,
level plain, interspersed with small cultivable areas for a farsakh or
two, beyond which lies the great dasht-i-namek (salt desert) that
comprises a large portion of the interior of Persia.
Wild asses abound on the dasht-i-namek, and wandering bands of these
animals occasionally stray up in this direction. The Persians consider
the flesh of the wild donkey as quite a delicacy, and sometimes hunt them
for their meat; they are said to be untamable, unless caught when very
young, and are then generally too slender-limbed to be of any service in
carrying weights. Wild goats abound in the Elburz Mountains; the
villagers hunt them also for their meat, but the flesh of the wild goat
is said to contribute largely to the prevalence of sore eyes among the
people. The Persian will eat wild donkey, wild goat, and the flesh of
camels, but only the very poor people--people who cannot afford to be
fastidious--ever touch a piece of beef; gusht-i-goosfang (mutton) is the
staple meat of the country.
The general aspect of the country immediately south of the Elburz
Mountains, beyond the circumscribed area of cultivation about the
villages, is that of a desert, desolate, verdureless, and forbidding. One
can scarcely realize that by simply crossing this range a beautiful
region is entered, where the prospect is as different as is light from
darkness. An entirely different climate characterizes the Province of
Mazanderan, comprising the northern slopes of these mountains and the
Caspian littoral. With a humid climate the whole year round, and the
entire face of the country covered with dense jungle, the northern slopes
of the Elburz Mountains present a striking contrast to the barren,
salt-frescoed foot-hills facing the south hereabout. Here, as at Resht,
the moisture from the Caspian Sea does for the province of Mazanderan
what similar influences from the Pacific do for California. It makes all
the difference between California and Nevada in the one case, and
Mazanderan and the desert-like character of Central Persia in the other.
In striking and effective contrast to the general aspect of death and
desolation that characterizes the desert wastes of Persia--an effect
that is heightened by the ruins of caravansaries or villages, that are
seldom absent from the landscape--are the cultivated spots around the
villages. Wherever there is a permanent supply of water, there also is
certain to be found a mud-built village, with fields of wheat and barley,
pomegranate orchards, and vineyards. In a country of universal greenness
these would count for nothing, but, situated like islands in the sea of
sombre gray about them, they often present an appearance of extreme
beauty that the wondering observer is somewhat puzzled to account for; it
is the beauty of contrast, the great and striking contrast between
vegetable life and death.
These impressions are nowhere more strongly brought into notice than when
approaching Aradan, a village I reach about five o'clock. Like almost all
Persian towns and villages, Aradan has evidently occupied a much larger
area at one time than it does at present; and the mournful-looking ruins
of mosques, gateways, walls, and houses are scattered here and there over
the plain for a mile before reaching the present limits of habitation.
The brown ruins of a house are seen standing in the middle of a
wheat-field; the wheat is of that intense greenness born of irrigation
and a rich sandy soil, and the mud ruins, dead, desolate, and crumbling
to dust, look even more deserted and mournful from the great contrast in
color, and from the myriad stems of green young life that wave and nod
about them with every passing breeze. The tumble-down windows and
doorways form openings through which the blue sky and the green waving
sea of vegetation beyond are seen as in a picture, and the ruined mud
mosque, its dome gone, its windows and doorways crumbled to shapeless
openings, seems like a weather-beaten skeleton of Persia's past, while
the ever-moving waves of verdant life about it, seem to be beating
against it and persistently assailing it, like waves of the sea beating
against an isolated rock.
While engaged in fording a stream on the stony plain between road. The
shagird-chapar is with them, on a third "bag of bones," worse, if
possible, than the others. Taking the world over, there is perhaps no
class of horses that are, subject to so much cruelty and ill-treatment as
the chapar horses of Persia, With back raw, ribs countable a hundred
yards away, spavined, blind of an eye, fistula, and cursed with every ill
that horseflesh in the hands of human brutes is subject to, the chapar
horse is liable to be taken out at any hour of the day or night,
regardless of previous services being but just finished. He is goaded on
with unsparing lash to the next station, twenty, or perhaps thirty miles
away, staggering beneath the weight of the traveller, or his servant,
with ponderous saddlebags.
This chapar, or post-service, is established along the great highways of
travel between Teheran and Tabreez, Teheran and Meshed, and Teheran and
Bushire, with a branch route from the Tabreez trail to the Caspian port
of Enzeli; the stations vary from four to eight farsakhs apart. Not all
the chapar horses are the wretched creatures just described, however, and
by engaging beforehand the best horses at each station along the route,
certain travellers have made quite remarkable time between points
hundreds of miles apart. In addition to horses for himself and servants,
the traveller is required to pay for one to carry the shagird-chapar who
accompanies them to the next station to bring back the horses. The
ordinary charge is one keran a farsakh for each horse. It wouldn't be a
Persian institution, however, if there wasn't some little underhanded
arrangement on hand to mulct the traveller of something over and above
the legitimate charges. Accordingly, we find two distinct measurements of
distance recognized between each station--the "chapar distance" and the
correct distance. If, for instance, the actual distance is six farsakhs,
the "chapar distance" will be seven, or seven and a half; the difference
between the two is the chapar-jee's modokal; without modokal there is no
question but that a Persian would feel himself to be a miserable,
neglected mortal.
Aradan is another telegraph control station, and Mr. Stagno informs me
that the telegraph-jee is looking forward to my arrival, and is fully
prepared to accommodate me over night; and, furthermore, that all along
the line the people of the telegraph towns are eagerly anticipating the
arrival of the Sahib, with the marvellous vehicle, of which they have
heard such strange stories. Aradan is reached about five o'clock; the
road leading into the village is found excellent wheeling, enabling me to
keep the saddle while following at the heels of a fleet-footed ryot, who
voluntarily guides me to the telegraph-khana. The telegraph-jee is
temporarily absent when I arrive, but his farrash lets me inside the
office yard, spreads a piece of carpet for me to sit on, and with
commendable thoughtfulness shuts out the crowd, who, as usual,
immediately begin to collect. The quickness with which a crowd collects
in a Persian town has to be seen to be fully comprehended. For the space
of half an hour, I sit in solitary state on the carpet, and endure the
wondering gaze and the parrot-like chattering of a thin, long row of
villagers, sitting astride the high mud wall that encloses three sides of
the compound, and during the time find some amusement in watching the
scrambling and quarrelling for position. These irrepressible sight-seers
commenced climbing the wall from the adjoining walls and houses the
moment the farash shut them out of the yard, and in five minutes they are
packed as close as books on a shelf, while others are quarreling noisily
for places; in addition to this, the roof of every building commanding a
view into the chapar-khana compound is swarmed with neck-craning,
chattering people.
Soon the telegraph-jee puts in an appearance; he proves to be an
exceptionally agreeable fellow, and one of the very few Persians one
meets with having blue eyes. He appears to regard it as quite an
understood thing that I am going to remain over night with him, and
proceeds at once to make the necessary arrangements for my accommodation,
without going to the trouble of extending a formal invitation. He also
wins my eternal esteem by discouraging, as far as Persian politeness and
civility will admit, the intrusion of the inevitable self-sufficients who
presume on their "eminent respectability" as loafers, in contradistinction
to the half-naked tillers of the soil, to invade the premises and satisfy
their inordinate curiosity, and their weakness for kalian, smoking and
tea-drinking at another's expense. After duly discussing between us a
samovar of tea, we take a stroll through the village to see the old
castle, and the umbars that supply the village with water. The telegraph-
gee cleared the walls upon his arrival, but the housetops are out of his
jurisdiction, and before starting he wisely suggests putting the bicycle
in some conspicuous position, as an inducement for the crowd to remain
and concentrate their curiosity upon it, otherwise there would be no
keeping them from following us about the village. We set it up in plain
view on the bala-khana, and returning from our walk, are amused to find
the old farrash delivering a lecture on cycling.
The fortress at Aradan is the first one of the kind one sees when
travelling eastward from Teheran, but as we shall come to a larger and
better preserved specimen at Lasgird, in a couple of days, it will,
perhaps, be advisable to postpone a description till then. They are all
pretty much alike, and were all built to serve the same purpose, of
affording shelter and protection from Turkoman raiders. The Aradan umbars
are nothing extraordinary, except perhaps that the conical brick-work
roofs are terraced so that one can walk, like ascending stairs, to the
summit; and perhaps, also, because they are in a good state of repair
--asufficiently unusual thing in a Persian village to merit remark. These
umbars are filled by allowing the water to flow in from a street ditch
connecting with the little stream to which every village owes its
existence; when the umbar is full, a few spadefuls of dirt shut the water
off.
The chief occupation of the Eastern female is undoubtedly carrying water;
the women of Oriental villages impress the observant Occidental, as
people who will carry water-worlds may be created and worlds destroyed;
all things else may change, and habits and costumes become revolutionized
by the march of time, but nothing will prevent the Oriental female from
carrying water, and carrying it in huge earthenware jugs! At any hour of
the day--I won't speak positively about the night--women may be seen
at the unbars filling large earthenware jugs, coming and going, going and
coming. I don't remember ever passing one of these cisterns without
seeing women there, filling and carrying away jars of water. No doubt
there are occasional odd moments when no women are there, but any person
acquainted with village life in the East will not fail to recognize this
as simply the plain, unvarnished truth. As the ditch from which the umbar
is filled not infrequently runs through half the length of the village
first, the personal habits of a Mohammedan population insure that it
reaches the umbar in anything but a fit condition for human consumption.
But the Koran teaches that flowing water cannot be contaminated or
defiled, consequently, when he takes a drink or fills the village
reservoir, your thoroughbred Mussulman never troubles his head about what
is going on up-stream. The Koran is to him a more reliable guide for his
own good than the evidence of all his seven senses combined.
Stagnant pools of water, covered, even this early in the season (March
12th), with green scum, breed fever and mosquitoes galore in Aradan; the
people know it, acknowledge it readily, and suffer from it every summer,
but they take no steps to remedy the evil; the spirit of public
enterprise has dwindled to such dimensions in provincial Persia, that it
is no longer equal to filling up a few fever-breeding pools of water in
the centre of a village. The telegraph-jee himself acknowledges that the
water-holes cause fever and mosquitoes, but, intelligent and enlightened
mortal though he be in comparison with his fellow-villagers, when
questioned about it, he replies: "Inshalla! the water don't matter; if it
is our kismet to take the fever and die, nothing can prevent it; if it is
our kismet not to take it, nothing can give it to us." Such unanswerable
logic could only originate in the brain of a fatalist; these people are
all fatalists, and--as we can imagine--especially so when the
doctrine comes in handy to dodge doing anything for the public weal.
All Persian villages, except those clustered about the immediate vicinity
of a large city, have some peculiarity of their own to offer in the
matter of the people's dress. The pantaloons of any Persian village are
not by any means stylish garments, according to Western ideas; but the
male bipeds of Aradan have something really extraordinary to offer, even
among the many startling patterns of this garment met with in Eastern
lands. To note the quantity of material that enters into the composition
of a pair of Aradan pantaloons, would lead an uninitiated person into
thinking the people all millionaires, were it not likewise observed that
the material is but coarse blue cotton, woven and dyed by the wearer's
wife, mother, or sister. One of the most conspicuous features about them
is that their shape--if they can truthfully be said to have any
shape--seems to be a wild, rambling pattern of our own ideas
concerning the shape this garment ought to assume. The legs, instead of
being gathered, Oriental fashion, at the ankles, dangle loosely about the
feet; and yet it is these same legs that are the chief distinguishing
feature of the pants. One of the legs, cut off and sewed up at one end,
would make the nicest kind of an eight-bushel grain sack; rather too
wide, perhaps, in proportion to the depth, to make a shapely grain sack,
but there is no question about the capacity for the eight bushels. No
doubt these people would be puzzled to say why they are wearing yards and
yards of stuff that is not only useless, but positively in the way,
except that it has been the fashion in Aradan from time immemorable to do
so. These simple Persian peasants, when they make any pretence of
sprucing up, probably find themselves quite as much enslaved by fashion
as our very fastidious selves; a wide difference betaken ourselves and
them, however, being, that while they cling tenaciously to some
prehistoric style of garment, and regard innovations with abhorrence,
fashion demands of us to be constantly changing.
The Aradan telegraph-jee is a young man skin-full of piety, rejoicing in
the possession of a nice little praying-carpet, a praying-stone from holy
Kerbela, the holiest of all except Mecca, and he owns a string of beads
of the same soul-comforting material as the stone. During his waking
hours he is seldom without the rosary in his hand, passing the holy beads
back and forth along the string; and five times a day he produces the
praying-stone from its little leathern pouch and goes through the
ceremony of saying his prayers, with becoming earnestness. At eventide,
when he spreads his praying-carpet and places the little oblong tablet
from Kerbela in its customary position, preparatory to commencing his
last prayers for the day, it is furthermore ascertained by the compass
that he has been pretty accurate in his daily prostrations toward Mecca.
With all these enviable advantages--the praying-carpet, the praying-stone,
the holy rosary, and the happy accuracy as regards Mecca--the Aradan
telegraph-jee is a Mussulman who ought to feel tolerably certain of a
rose-garden, a gurgling rivulet, and any number of black-eyed houris to
contribute to his happiness in the paradise he hopes to enter beyond the
tomb.
Indications have not been wanting during the day that the weather is in
anything but a settled condition, and upon waking in the morning I fancy
I hear the pattering music of the rain. Fortunately it proves to be only
fancy, and the telegraph-jee, assuming the part of a weather-prophet,
reassures me by remarking, "Inshalla, am roos, baran neis" (Please God,
it will not rain to-day). Being a Persian, he says this, not because he
has any particular confidence in his own predictions, but because his
idea of making himself agreeable is to frame his predictions by the
measurement of what he discovers to be my wishes.
The road into Aradan led me through one populous cemetery, and the road
out again leads me through another; beyond the cemetery it follows
alongside a meandering streamlet that flows, sluggishly along over a bed
of deep gray mud. The road is lumpy but ridable, and I am pedalling
serenely along, happy in the contemplation of better roads ahead than I
had yesterday, when one of those ludicrous incidents happen that have
occurred at intervals here and there all along my journey. A party of
travellers have been making a night march from the east, and as we
approach each other, a wary kafaveh-carrying mule, suspicious about the
peaceful character of the mysterious object bearing down toward him,
pricks up his ears, wheels round, and inaugurates confusion among his
fellows, and then proceeds to head them in a determined bolt across the
stream. Unfortunately for the women in the kajavehs, the mud and water
together prove to be deeper than the mule expected to find them, and the
additional fright of finding himself in a well-nigh swamped condition,
causes him to struggle violently to get out again. In so doing he bursts
whatever fastenings may have bound him and his burden together, scrambles
ashore, and leaves the kajavehs floating on the water!
The women began screaming the moment the mule wheeled round and bolted,
and now they find themselves afloat in their queer craft, these
characteristic female signals of distress are redoubled in energy; and
they may well be excused for this, for the kajavehs are gradually filling
and sinking; it was never intended that kajavehs should be capable of
acting in the capacity of a boat. The sight of their companion's
difficulties has the effect of causing the other mules to change their
minds about crossing the stream, and almost to change their minds about
indulging in the mulish luxury of a scare; and fortunately the charvadars
of the party succeed in rescuing the kajavehs before they sink. Nobody is
injured, beyond the women getting wet; no damage is done worth
mentioning, and as the two heroines of the adventure emerge from their
novel craft, their garments dripping with water, their doleful looks are
rewarded with unsympathetic merriment from the men. Few have been my
wheeling days on Asian roads that have not witnessed something in the
shape of an overthrow or runaway; so far, nobody has been seriously
injured by them, but I have sometimes wondered whether it will be my good
fortune to complete the bicycle journey around the world without some
mishap of the kind, resulting in broken limbs for the native and trouble
for myself.
After a couple of miles the road and the meandering stream part company,
the latter flowing southward and the road traversing a flat, curious,
stone-strewn waste; an area across which one could step from one large
boulder to another without touching the ground. Once beyond this, and the
road develops into several parallel trails of smooth, hard gravel, that
afford as good, or better, wheeling than the finest macadam. While
spinning at a highly satisfactory rate of speed along these splendid
paths, a small herd of antelopes cross the road some few hundred yards
ahead, and pass swiftly southward toward the dasht-i-namek. These are the
first antelopes, or, for that matter, the first big game I have
encountered since leaving the prairies of Western Nebraska. The Persian
antelope seems to be a duplicate of his distinguished American relative
in a general, all-round sense; he is, if anything, even more
nimble-footed than the spring-heeled habitue of the West, possesses the
same characteristic jerky jump, and hoists the same conspicuous white
signal of retreat. He is a decidedly slimmer-built quadruped, however,
than the American antelope; the body is of the same square build, but is
sadly lacking in plumpness, and he seems to be an altogether lankier and
less well-favored animal. For this constitutional difference, he is
probably indebted to the barren and inhospitable character of the country
over which he roams, as compared with the splendid feeding-grounds of
the--Far West. The Persians sometimes hunt the antelope on horseback,
with falcons and greyhounds; the falcons are taught to fly in advance and
attack the fleeing antelopes about the head, and so confuse them and
retard their progress in the interest of the pursuing hounds and
horsemen.
The little village of Deh Namek is reached about mid-day, where my
ever-varying bill of fare takes the shape of raw eggs and pomegranates.
Deh Namek is too small and unimportant a place to support a public
tchai-khan; but along the Meshed pilgrim road the villagers are keenly
alive to the chance of earning a stray keran, and the advent of one of
those inexhaustible keran-mines, a "Sahib," is the signal for some
enterprising person, sufficiently well-to-do to own a samovar, to get up
steam in it and prepare tea.
East of Deh Namek, the wheeling continues splendid for a dozen miles,
traversing a level desert on which one finds no drinkable water for about
twenty miles. Across the last eight miles of the desert the road is
variable, consisting of alternate stretches of ridable and unridable
ground, the latter being generally unridable by reason of sand and loose
gravel, or thickly strewn flints. More antelopes are encountered east of
Deh Namek; at one place, particularly, I enjoy quite a little exciting
spurt in an effort to intercept a band that are heading across my road
from the Elburz foot-hills to the desert. The wheeling is here
magnificent, the spurt develops into a speed of fourteen miles an hour;
the antelopes see their danger, or, at all events, what they fancy to be
danger, and their apprehensions are not by any mean lessened by the new
and startling character of their pursuer. Wild antelopes are timid things
at all times, and, as may be readily imagined, the sight of a mysterious
glistening object, speeding along at a fourteen or fifteen mile pace to
intercept them, has a magical effect upon their astonishing powers of
locomotion. They seem to fly rather than run, and to skim like swallows
over the surface of the level plain rather than to touch the ground; but
they were some distance from the road when they first realized my
terrifying presence, and I am within fifty yards of the band when they
flash like a streak of winged terror across the road. These antelopes do
not cease their wild flight within the range of my powers of observation;
long after the mousy hue of their bodies has rendered their forms
indistinguishable in the distance from the sympathetic coloring of the
desert, rapidly bobbing specks of white betray the fact that their
supposed narrow escape from the vengeful pursuit of the bicycle has given
them a fright that will make them suspicious of the Meshed pilgrim road
for weeks.
"Deh Namek" means "salt village;" and it derives its name from the salt
flats that are visible to the south of the road, and the general saline
character of the country round about. Salt enters very largely into the
composition of the mountains that present a solid and fantastically
streaked front a few miles to the north; and the streams flowing from
these mountains are simply streams of brine, whose mission would seem to
be conveying the saline matter from the hills, and distributing it over
the flats and swampy areas of the desert. These flats are visible from
the road, white, level, and impressive; like the Great American Desert,
Utah, as seen from the Matlin section house, and described in a previous
chapter (Vol. I.), it looks as though it might be a sheet of water,
solidified and dead.
At the end of the twenty miles one comes to a small and unpretentious
village and an equally small and unpretentious wayside tchai-khan, both
owing their existence to a stream of fresh water as small and
unpretentious as themselves. Beyond this cheerless oasis stretches again
the still more cheerless desert, the rivulets of undrinkable salt water,
the glaring white salt-flats to the south, and the salt-encrusted
mountains to the north. The shameless old party presiding at the
tchai-khan evidently realizes the advantages of his position, where many
travellers from either direction, reaching the place in a thirsty
condition, have no choice but between his decoction and cold water.
Instead of the excellent tea every Persian knows very well how to make,
he serves out a preparation that is made, I should say, chiefly from
camelthorn buds plucked within a mile of his shanty; he furthermore
illustrates in his own methods the baneful effects of being without the
stimulus of a rival, by serving it up in unwashed glasses, and without
noticing whether it is hot or cold.
Much loose gravel prevails between this memorable point and Lasgird, and
while trundling laboriously through it I am overtaken by a rain-storm,
accompanied by violent wind, that at first encompasses me about in the
most peculiar manner. The storm comes howling from the northwest and
advances in two sections, accompanied by thunder and lightning; the two
advancing columns seem to be dense masses of gray cloud rolling over the
surface of the plain, and between them is a clear space of perhaps half a
mile in width. The rain-dispensing columns pass me by on either side with
muttering rolls of thunder and momentary gleams of lightning, enveloping
me in swirling eddies of dust and bewildering atmospheric disturbances,
but not a drop of rain. It is plainly to be seen, however, that the two
columns are united further west, and that it behooves me to don my
gossamer rubbers; but before being overtaken by the rain, the heads of
the flying columns are drawn together, and for some minutes I am
surrounded entirely by sheets of falling moisture and streaming clouds
that descend to the level plain and obscure the view in every direction;
and yet the clear sky is immediately above, and the ground over which I
am walking is perfectly dry. After the first violent burst there is very
little wind, and the impenetrable walls of vapor encompassing me round
about at so near a distance, and yet not interfering with me in any way,
present a most singular appearance. While appreciating the extreme
novelty of the situation, I can scarce say in addition that I appreciate
the free play of electricity going on in all directions, and the
irreverent manner in which the nickeled surface of the bicycle seems to
glint at it and defy it; on the contrary, I deem it but an act of common
discretion to place the machine for a short time where the lightning can
have a fair chance at it, without involving a respectful non-combatant in
the destruction. In half an hour the whole curious affair is over, and
nothing is seen but the wild-looking tail-end of the disturbance climbing
over a range of mountains in the southeast.
The road now edges off in a more northeasterly course, and by four
o'clock leads me to the base of a low pass over a jutting spur of the
mountains. At the base of the spur, a cultivated area, consisting of
several wheat-fields and terraced melon-gardens, has been rescued from
the unproductive desert by the aid of a bright little mountain stream,
whose wild spirit the villagers of Lasgird have curbed and tamed for
their own benefit, by turning it from its rocky, precipitous channel, and
causing it to descend the hill in a curious serpentine ditch. The contour
of the ditch is something like this: ~~~~~~~~~~~; it brings the water
down a pretty steep gradient, and its serpentine form checks the speed of
its descent to an uniform and circumspect pace. The road over the pass
leads through a soft limestone formation, and here, as in similar places
in Asia Minor, are found those narrow, trench-like trails, worn by the
feet of pilgrims and the pack-animal traffic of centuries, several feet
deep in the solid rock. On a broad cultivated plain beyond the pass is
sighted the village of Lasgird, its huge mud fortress, the most
conspicuous object in view, rising a hundred feet above the plain.
CHAPTER III.
PERSIA AND THE MESHED PILGRIM ROAD.
A mile or so through the cultivated fields brings me to the village just
in time to be greeted by the shouts and hand-clapping of a wedding
procession that is returning from conducting the bride to the bath. Men
and boys are beating rude, home-made tambourines, and women are dancing
along before the bride, clicking castanets, while a crowd of at least two
hundred villagers, arrayed in whatever finery they can muster for the
occasion, are following behind, clapping their hands in measured chorus.
This hand-clapping is, I believe, pretty generally practiced by the
villagers all over Central Asia on festive occasions. As a result of
riding for the crowd, I receive an invitation to take supper at the house
of the bridegroom's parents. Having obtained sleeping quarters at the
chapar-khana, I get the shagird-chapar to guide me to the house at the
appointed hour, and arrive just in time for supper. The dining-room is a
low-ceiled apartment, about thirty feet long and eight wide, and is dimly
lighted by rude grease lamps, set on pewter lamp-stands on the floor.
Squatting on the floor, with their backs to the wall, about fifty
villagers form a continuous human line around the room. These all rise
simultaneously to their feet as I am announced, bob their heads
simultaneously, simultaneously say, "Sahib salaam," and after I have been
provided with a place, simultaneously resume their seats. Pewter trays
are now brought in by volunteer waiters, and set on the floor before the
guests, one tray for every two guests, and a separate one for myself. On
each tray is a bowl of mast (milk soured with rennet--the "yaort" of Asia
Minor), a piece of cheese, one onion, a spoonful or two of pumpkin butter
and several flat wheaten cakes. This is the wedding supper. The guests
break the bread into the mast and scoop the mixture out with their
fingers, transferring it to their mouths with the dexterity of Chinese
manipulating a pair of chop-sticks; now and then they take a nibble at
the piece of cheese or the onion, and they finish up by consuming the
pumpkin butter. The groom doesn't appear among the guests; he is under
the special care of several female relations in another apartment, and is
probably being fed with tid-bits from the henna-stained fingers of old
women, who season them with extravagant and lying stories of the bride's
beauty, and duly impress upon him his coming matrimonial
responsibilities.
Supper eaten and the dishes cleared, an amateur luti from among the
villagers produces a tambourine and castanets, and, taking the middle of
the room, proceeds to amuse the company by singing extempore love songs
in praise of the bride and groom to tambourine accompaniment and
pendulous swayings of the body. Pretending to be carried away by the
melodiousness and sentiment of his own productions, he gradually bends
backward with hands outstretched and castanets jingling, until his head
almost touches the floor, and maintains that position while keeping his
body in a theatrical tremor of delight. This is the finale of the
performance, and the luti comes and sets his skull-cap in front of me for
a present; my next neighbor, the bridegroom's father, takes it up and
hands it back with a deprecatory wave of the hand; the luti replies by
promptly setting it down again; this time my neighbor lets it remain, and
the luti is made happy by a coin.
Torchlight processions to the different baths are now made from the house
of both bride and groom, for this is the "hammam night," devoted to
bathing and festivities before the wedding-day. Torches are made with dry
camelthorn, the blaze being kept up by constant renewal; a boy, with a
lighted candle, walks immediately ahead of the bridegroom and his female
relations, and a man with a farnooze brings up the rear. Nobody among the
onlookers is permitted to lag behind the man with the farnooze, everybody
being required to either walk ahead or alongside. The tambourine-beating
and shouting and hand-clapping of the afternoon is repeated, and every
now and then the procession stops to allow one or two of the women to
face the bridegroom and favor him with an exhibition of their skill in
the execution of the hip-dance.
The bridal procession is coming down another street, and I stop to try
and obtain a glimpse of the bride; but she is completely enveloped in a
flaming red shawl, and is supported and led by two women. There seems to
be little difference in the two processions, except the preponderance of
females in the bride's party; everything is arranged in the same order,
and women dance at intervals before the bride as before the groom.
It begins raining before I retire for the night; it rains incessantly all
night, and is raining heavily when I awake in the morning. The weather
clears up at noon, but it is useless thinking of pushing on, for miles of
tenacious mud intervene between the village and the gravelly desert;
moreover, the prospect of the fine weather holding out looks anything but
reassuring. The villagers are all at home, owing to the saturated
condition of their fields, and I come in for no small share of worrying
attention during the afternoon. A pilgrim from Teheran turns up and tells
the people about my appearance before the Shah; this increases their
interest in me to an unappreciated extent, and, with glistening eyes and
eagerly rubbing fingers, they ask "Chand pool Padishah?" (How much money
did the King give you?) "I showed the Shah the bicycle, and the Shah
showed me the lions, and tigers, and panthers at Doshan Tepe," I tell
them; and a knowing customer, called Meshedi Ali, enlightens them still
further by telling them I am not a luti to receive money for letting the
Shah-in-Shah see me ride. Still, luti or no luti, the people think I
ought to have received a present. I am worried to ride so incessantly
that I am forced to seek self-protection in pretending to have sprained
my ankle, and in returning to the chapar-khana with a hypocritical limp.
I station myself ostensibly for the remainder of the day on the
bala-khana front, and busy myself in taking observations of the villagers
and their doings.
Time was, among ourselves, or more correctly, among our ancestors, when
blood-letting was as much the professional calling of a barber as
scraping chins or trimming hair, and when our respected beef-eating and
beer-drinking forefathers considered wholesale blood-letting as a
well-nigh universal panacea for fleshly ills. In travelling through
Persia, one often observes things that suggest very strikingly those
"good old days" of Queen Bess. The citizens of Zendjan offering the Shah
a present of 60,000 tomans, as an inducement not to visit their city, as
they did when he was on his way to Europe, has a true Elizabethan ring
about it, a suggestion of the Virgin Queen's rabble retinue travelling
about, devouring and destroying, and of justly apprehensive citizens,
seeing ruin staring them in the face, petitioning their regal mistress to
spare them the dread calamity of a royal visit.
The ancient Zoroastrian barber, no doubt, bled his patients and customers
on the public streets of Persian towns, for the benefit of their healths,
when we pinned our pagan faith on Druidical incantations and mystic rites
and ceremonies; his Mussulman descendants were doing the same thing when
we at length arrived at the same stage of enlightenment, and the Persian
wielder of razor and tweezers to-day performs the same office as
belonging to his profession. From my vantage point on the bala-khana of
the Lasgird chapar station, I watch, with considerable interest, the
process of bleeding a goodly share of the male population of the village;
for it is spring-time, and in spring, every Persian, whether well or
unwell, considers the spilling of half a pint or so of blood very
necessary for the maintenance of health.
The village barber, with his arms bared, and the flowing, o'er-ample legs
of his Aradan-Lasgird pantaloons tucked up at his waist, like a
washerwoman's skirt, a bunch of raw cotton in lieu of lint under his left
arm, and his keen-edged razor, looks like a man who thoroughly realizes
and enjoys the importance of the office he is performing, as from the
bared arm or open mouth of one after the other of his neighbors he starts
the crimson stream. The candidates for the barber's claret-tapping
attentions bare their right arms to the shoulder, and bind for each other
a handkerchief or piece of something tightly above the elbow, and the
barber deftly slits a vein immediately below the hollow of the
elbow-joint, pressing out the vein he wishes to cut by a pressure of the
left thumb. The blood spurts out, the patient looks at the squirting
blood, and then surveys the onlookers with a "who-cares?--I-don't" sort of
a grin. He then squats down and watches it bleed about a half-pint,
occasionally working the elbow-joint to stimulate the flow. Half a pint
is considered about the correct quantity for an adult to lose at one
bleeding; the barber then binds on a small wad of cotton.
Now and then a customer gives the barber a trifling coin by way of
backsheesh, but the great majority give nothing. In a mere village like
Lasgird, these periodical blood-lettings by the barber are, no doubt,
regarded as being all in the family, rather than of professional services
for a money consideration. The communal spirit obtains to a great extent
in village life throughout both Asia Minor and Persia; nevertheless
backsheesh would be expected in Persia from those able to afford it. Some
few prefer being bled in the roof the mouth, and they all squat on their
hams in rows, some bleeding from the arm, others from the mouth, while
the inevitable crowd of onlookers stand around, gazing and giving advice.
While the barber is engaged in binding on the wad of cotton, or during
any interval between patients, he inserts the handle of the razor between
his close-fitting skull-cap and his forehead, letting the blade hang down
over his face, edge outward; a peculiar disposition of his razor, that he
would, no doubt, be entirely at a loss to account for, except that he is
following the custom of his fathers. As regards the customs of his
ancestors, whose trade or profession he invariably follows, the Asiatic
is the most conservative of mortals. "What was good enough for my father
and grandfather," he says, "is certainly good enough for me;" and
earnestly believing in this, he never, of his own accord, thinks of
changing his occupation or of making improvements.
Later in the afternoon I descend from the bala-khana and take a strolling
look at the village, and with the shagird-chapar for guide, pay a visit
to the old fortress, the conspicuous edifice seen from the trail-worn
limestone pass. Forgetting about my subterfuge of the sprained ankle, I
wander forth without the aforementioned limp; but the people seem to have
forgotten it as completely as I had; at all events, nobody makes any
comments. A ripple of excitement is caused by a two-storied house
collapsing from the effects of the soaking rains, an occurrence by no
means infrequent in the spring in a country of mud-built houses. A crowd
soon appears upon the scene, watching, with unconcealed delight, the
spectacle of tumbling roof and toppling wall, giving vent to their
feelings in laughter and loud shouts of approval, like delighted
children, whenever another bulky square of mud and thatch comes tumbling
down. Fortunately, nobody happens to be hurt, beyond the half-burying in
the debris of some donkeys, which are finally induced to extricate
themselves by being vigorously bombarded with stones. No sympathy appears
to be given on the part of the spectators, and evidently nothing of the
kind is expected by the tenants of the tumbling house; the wailing women,
and the look of consternation on the face of the men who barely escaped
from the falling roof, seem to be regarded by the spectators as a tomasha
(show), to be stared at and enjoyed, as they would stare at and enjoy
anything not seen every day; on the other hand, the occupants of the
house regard their misfortune as kismet.
Returning to the chapar-ktiana, I get the shayird to pilot me into and
round about the fortress. It is rapidly falling to decay, but is still in
a sufficiently good state of preservation to show thoroughly its former
strength and conformation. The fortress is a decidedly massive building,
constructed entirely of mud and adobe bricks, a hundred feet high, of
circular form, and some two hundred yards in circumference. The
disintegrated walls and debris of former towers form a sloping mound or
foundation about fifty feet in height, and from this the perpendicular
walls of the castle rise up, huge and ugly, for another hundred feet.
Following a foot-trail up the mound-like base, we come to a low, gloomy
passage-way leading into the interior of the fort. A door, composed of
one massive stone slab, that nothing less than a cannon-shot would
shatter, guards the entrance to this passage, which is the only
accessible entrance to the place. Following it along for perhaps thirty
yards, we emerge upon a scene of almost indescribable squalor--a scene
that instantly suggests an overcrowded "rookery" in the tenement-house
slums of New York. The place is simply swarming with people, who, like
rabbits in an old warren, seem to be moving about among the tumble-down
mud huts, anywhere and everywhere, as though the old ruined fortress were
burrowed through and through, or that the people now moved through, over,
under, and around the remnants of what was once a more orderly collection
of dwellings, having long forsaken regular foot-ways.
The inhabitants are ragged and picturesque, and meandering about among
them, on the most familiar terms, are hundreds of goats. Although
everything is in a more or less dilapidated condition, huts or cells
still rise above each other in tiers, and the people clamber about from
tier to tier, as if in emulation of their venturesome four-footed
associates, who are here, we may well imagine, in as perfect a paradise
as vagrom goatish nature would care for or expect. At a low estimate, I
should place the present population of the old fortress at a thousand
people, and about the same number of goats. In the days when the bold
Turkoman raiders were wont to make their dreaded damans almost up to the
walls of Teheran, and such strongholds as this were the only safeguard of
out-lying villagers, the interior of Lasgird fortress resembled a
spacious amphitheatre, around which hundreds of huts rose, tier above
tier, like the cells of a monster pigeon-house, affording shelter in
times of peril to all the inhabitants of Lasgird, and to such refugees as
might come in. At the first alarm of the dreaded man-stealers' approach,
the outside villagers repaired to the fortress with their portable
property; the donkeys and goats were driven inside and occupied the
interior space, and the massive stone door was closed and barricaded. The
villagers' granaries were inside the fortress, and provisions for
obtaining water were not overlooked; so that once inside, the people were
quite secure against any force of Turkomans, whose heaviest arms were
muskets.
The suggestion of an amphitheatre, as above described, is quite patent at
the present day, in something like two or three hundred tiered dwellings;
in the days of its usefulness there must have been a thousand. Thanks to
the Russian occupation of Turkestan, there is no longer any need of the
fortress, and the present population seem to be occupying it at the peril
of having it some day tumble down about their ears; for, massive though
its walls most certainly are, they are but mud, and the people are
indifferent about repairs. Failing to surprise the watchful villagers in
their fields or outside dwellings, the baffled marauders would find
confronting them fifty feet of solid mud wall without so much as an
air-hole in it, rising sheer above the mound-like foundation, and above
this, tiers of rooms or cells, from inside which archers or musketeers
could make it decidedly interesting for any hostile party attempting to
approach. This old fortress of Lasgird is very interesting, as showing
the peaceful and unwarlike Persian ryot's method of defending his life
and liberty against the savage human hawks that were ever hovering near,
ready to swoop down and carry him and his off to the slave markets of
Khiva and Bokhara. These were times when seed was sown and harvest
garnered in fear and trembling, for the Turkoman raiders were adepts at
swooping down when least expected, and they rode horses capable of making
their hundred miles a day over the roughest country. (Incredible as this
latter fact may seem, it is, nevertheless, a well-known thing in Central
Asia that the Turkoman's horse is capable of covering this remarkable
distance, and of keeping it up for days.)
A thunder-storm is raging violently and drenching everything as I retire
for the night, dampening, among other things, my hopes of getting away
from Lasgird for some days; for between the village and the gravelly, and
consequently always traversable, desert, are some miles of slimy clay of
the kind that in wet weather makes an experienced cycler wince to think
of crossing. The floor of the bala-khana forms once again my nocturnal
couch; but the temperature lowers perceptibly as the night advances and
the rain continues, and toward morning it changes into snow. The doors
and windows of my room are to be called doors and windows only out of
courtesy to a rude, unfinished effort to imitate these things, and the
floor, at daybreak, is nicely carpeted with an inch or so of "the
beautiful snow," and a four-inch covering of the same greets my vision
upon looking outside.
Determined to make the best of the situation, I remove my quarters from
the cold and draughty bala-khana to the stable, and send the
shagird-chapar out in quest of camel-thorn, bread, eggs, and
pomegranates, thinking thus to obtain the luxury of a bit of fire and
something to eat in comparative seclusion. This vain hope proves that I
have not even yet become thoroughly acquainted with the Persians. No
sooner does my camel-thorn blaze begin to crackle and the smoke to betray
the whereabouts of a fire, than shivering, blue-nosed villagers begin to
put in their appearance, their backs humped up and their bare ankles and
slip-shod feet adding not a little to the general aspect of wretchedness
that seems inseparable from Persians in cold weather.
And these are the people who, during a gleam of illusory sunshine
yesterday, were so nonchalantly parting with their blood--of which, by the
by, your bread and cucumber eating, and cold water drinking Persian has
little enough, and that little thin enough at any time. These
rag-bedecked, shivering wretches hop up on the raised platform where the
fire is burning and squat themselves around it in the most sociable
manner; and under the thawing process of passing their hands through the
flames, poking the coals together, and close attention to the details of
keeping it burning, they quickly thaw out in more respects than one.
Fifteen minutes after my fire is lighted, the spot where I anticipated a
samovar of tea and a pomegranate or two in peace, is occupied by as many
Persians as can find squatting room, talking, shouting, singing, and
kalian-smoking, meanwhile eagerly and expectantly watching the
preparations for making tea. Preferring to leave them in full possession
rather than be in their uncongenial midst, I pass the time in promenading
back and forth behind the horses. After walking to and fro a few times,
the, to them, singular performance of walking back and forth excites
their easily-aroused curiosity, and the wondering attention of all
present becomes once again my unhappy portion. An Asiatic's idea of
enjoying himself in cold weather is squatting about a few coals of fire,
making no physical exertion whatever beyond smoking and conversing; and
the spectacle of a Ferenghi promenading back and forth, when he might be
following their example of squatting by the fire, is to them a subject of
no little wonder and speculation.
The redeeming feature of my enforced sojourn at Lasgird is the excellence
of the pomegranates, for which the place is famous, and of which there
seems an abundance left over through the winter. A small quantity of
seedless pomegranates, a highly valued variety, are grown here at
Lasgird, but they are all sent to Teheran for the use of the Shah and his
household, and are not to be obtained by anyone. It has been a raw,
disagreeable day, and at night I decide to sleep in the stable, where it
is at least warmer, though the remove is but a compromise by which one's
olfactory sensibilities are sacrificed in the interest of securing a few
hours' sleep.
An unexpected, but none the less welcome, deliverance appears on the
following morning in the shape of a frost, that forms on the sticky mud a
crust of sufficient thickness to enable me to escape across to the
welcome gravel beyond the Lasgird Plain ere it thaws out. Thus on the
precarious path of a belated morning frost, breaking through here,
jumping over there, I leave Lasgird and its memories of wedding
processions, and blood-letting, its huge mud fortress, its pomegranates,
and its discomforts.
Three miles of mostly ridable gravel bring me to another village, and to
four miles of horrible mud in getting through its fields and over its
ditches. A raw wind is blowing, and squally gusts of snow come scudding
across the dreary prospect--a prospect flanked on the north by cold, gray
hills, and the face of nature generally furrowed with tell-tale lines of
winter's partial dissolution. While trundling through this village, both
myself and bicycle plastered to a well-nigh unrecognizable state with
mud, feeling pretty thoroughly disgusted with the weather and the roads,
an ancient-looking Persian emerges from a little stall with a last
season's muskmelon in hand, and advancing toward me, shouts, "H-o-i"
loud enough to wake the seven sleepers. Shouting "H-o-i!!" at a person
close enough to hear a whisper, as loud as though he were a good mile
away, is a peculiarity of the Persians that has often irritated
travellers to the pitch of wishing they had a hot potato and the
dexterity to throw it down their throats; and in my present unenviable
condition, and its accompanying unenviable frame of mind, I don't mind
admitting that I mentally relegated this vociferous melon-vender to a
place where infinitely worse than hot potatoes would overtake him.
Knowing full well that a halt of a single minute would mean a general
mustering of the population, and an importuning rabble following me
through the unridable mud, I ignore the old melon-man's foghorn efforts
to arrest my onward progress; but he proves a most vociferous and
persistent specimen of his class. Nothing less than a dozen exclamation
points can give the faintest idea of how a "hollering" Persian shouts
"H-o-i."
Seven miles over very good gravel, and my road leads into the labyrinth
of muddy lanes, ditches, and water-holes, tumble down walls, and
disorderly-looking cemeteries of the suburbs of Semnoon. In traversing
the cemeteries, one cannot help observing how many of the graves are
caved in by the rains and the skeletons exposed to view. Mohammedans bury
their dead very shallow, usually about two feet, and in Persia the grave
is often arched over with soft mud bricks; these weaken and dissolve
after the rains and snows of winter, and a cemetery becomes a place of
exposed remains and of pitfalls, where an unwary step on what appears
solid ground may precipitate one into the undesirable company of a
skeleton. By the time Semnoon is reached the day has grown warmer, and
the sun favors the cold, dismal earth with a few genial rays, so that the
blooming orchards of peach and pomegranate that brighten and enliven the
environs of the city, and which suggest Semnoon to be a mild and
sheltered spot, seem quite natural, notwithstanding the patches of snow
lying about. The crowds seem remarkably well behaved as I trundle through
the bazaar toward the telegraph office, the total absence of missiles
being particularly noticeable. The telegraph-jee proves to be a sensible,
enlightened fellow, and quite matter-of-fact in his manner for a Persian;
apart from his duty to the Governor and a few bigwigs of the place, whom
it would be unpardonable in him to overlook or ignore, he saves me as
much as possible from the worrying of the people.
Prince Anushirvan Mirza, Governor of Semnoon, Damghan, and Shahrood, is
the Shah's cousin, son of Baahman Mirza, uncle of the Shah, and formerly
Governor of Tabreez. Baahman Mirza was discovered intriguing with the
Russians, and, fearing the vengeance of the Shah, fled from the country;
seeking an asylum among the Russians, he is now--if not dead--a refugee
somewhere in the Caucasus. But the father's disgrace did not prejudice
the Shah against his sons, and Prince Anushirvan and his sons are honored
and trusted by the Shah as men capable of distinguishing between the
friends and enemies of their country, and of conducting themselves
accordingly.
The Governor's palace is not far from the north gate of the city, and
after the customary round of tea and kalians, without which nothing can
be done in Persia, he walks outside with his staff to a piece of good
road in order to see me ride to the best advantage. (As a specimen of
Persian extravagance--to use a very mild term--it may be as well to
mention here as anywhere, that the Governor telegraphed to his son,
acting as his deputy at Shahrood, that he had ridden some miles with me
out of the city!)
During the evening one of the Governor's sons, Prince Sultan Madjid
Mirza, comes in with a few leading dignitaries to spend an hour in
chatting and smoking. This young prince proves one of the most
intelligent Persians I have met in the country; besides being very well
informed for a provincial Persian, he is bright and quick-witted. Among
the gentlemen he brings in with him is a man who has made the pilgrimage
to Mecca via "Iskenderi" (Alexandria) and Suez, and has, consequently,
seen and ridden on the Egyptian railway. The Prince has heard his
description of this railway, and the light thus gained has not
unnaturally had the effect of whetting his curiosity to hear more of the
marvellous iron roads of Frangistan; and after exhausting the usual
programme of queries concerning cycling, the conversation leads, by easy
transition, to the subject of railways.
"Do they have railways in Yenghi Donia?" questioned the Prince.
"Plenty of railways; plenty of everything," I reply.
"Like the one at Iskenderi and Stamboul?"
"Better and bigger than both these put together a hundred times over; the
Iskenderi railroad is very small."
Nods and smiles of acquiescence from Prince and listeners follow this
statement, which show plainly enough that they consider it a pardonable
lie, such as every Persian present habitually indulges in himself and
thinks favorably of in others.
"Railroads are good things, and Ferenghis are very clever people," says
the Prince, renewing the subject and handing me a handful of salted melon
seeds from his pocket, meanwhile nibbling some himself.
"Yes; why don't you have railroads in Iran? You could then go to Teheran
in a few hours."
The Prince smiles amusingly at the thought, as though conscious of
railroads in Persia being a dream altogether too bright to ever
materialize, and shaking his head, says: "Pool neis" (we have no money).
"The English have money and would build the railroad; but, 'Mollah neis'
--Baron Reuter?--you know Baron Reuter--' Mollah neis,'
not 'pool neis.'"
The Prince smiles, and signifies that he is well enough aware where the
trouble lies; but we talk no more of railroads, for he and his father and
brothers belong to the party of progress in Persia, and the triumph of
priests and old women over the Shah and Baron Reuter's railway is to them
a distressful and humiliating subject.
The late lamented O'Donovan, of "To the Merve" fame, used to make Semnoon
his headquarters while dodging about on the frontier, and was personally
known to everyone present. Semnoon is celebrated for the excellence of
its kalian tobacco, and O'Donovan was celebrated in Semnoon for his love
of the kalian. This evening, in talking about him, the telegraph-jee says
that "when he pulled at the kalian he pulled with such tremendous
eagerness that the flames leaped up to the ceiling, and after three
whiffs you couldn't see anybody in the room for smoke!"
The telegraph-jee's farrash builds a good wood fire in a cozy little room
adjoining the office; blankets are provided, an ample supper is sent
around from the telegraph-jee's house, and what is still better
appreciated, I am left to enjoy these substantial comforts without so
much as a single spectator coming to see me feed; no one comes near me
till morning.
The morning breaks cold and clear, and for some six miles the road is
very fair wheeling; after this comes a gradual inclination toward a
jutting spur of hills; the following twenty miles being the toughest kind
of a trundle through mud, snow-fields, and drifts. This is a most
uninviting piece of country to wheel through, and it would seem but
little less so to traverse at this time of the year with a caravan of
camels, two or three of these animals being found exhausted by the
roadside, and a couple of charvadars encountered in one place skinning
another, while its companion is lying helplessly alongside watching the
operation and waiting its own turn to the same treatment. It is said to
be characteristic of a camel that, when he once slips down, cold and
weary, in the mud, he never again tries to regain his feet. The weather
looks squally and unsettled, and I push ahead as rapidly as the condition
of the ground will permit, fearing a snow-storm in the hills.
About three p.m. I arrive at the caravansarai of Ahwan, a dreary,
inhospitable place in an equally dreary, inhospitable country. Situated
in a region of wind and snow and bleak, open hills, the wretched serai of
Ahwan is remembered as a place where the keen, raw wind seems to come
whistling gleefully and yet maliciously from all points of the compass,
seemingly centring in the caravansarai itself; these winds render any
attempt to kindle a fire a dismal failure, resulting in smoke and watery
eyes. Here I manage to obtain half-frozen bread and a few eggs; after an
ineffectual attempt to roast the latter and thaw out the former, I am
forced to eat them both as they are; and although the sun looks ominously
low, and it is six farsakhs to the next place, I conclude to chance
anything rather than risk being snow-bound at Ahwan. Fortunately, after
about five miles more of snow, the trail emerges upon a gravelly plain
with a gradual descent from the hills just crossed to the lower level of
the Damghan plain. The favorable gradient and the smooth trails induce a
smart pace, and as the waning daylight merges into the soft, chastened
light of a cloud-veiled moon, I alight at the village and serai of
Gusheh.
There are at the caravansarai a number of travellers, among them a moujik
of the Don, travelling to Teheran and beyond in company with a Tabreez
Turk. The Russian peasant at once invites me to his menzil in the
caravansarai; and although he looks, if anything, a trifle more
indifferent about personal cleanliness than either a Turkish or Persian
peasant, I have no alternative but to accept his well-meant invitation.
At this juncture, when one's thoughts are swayed and influenced by an
appetite that the cold day and hard tugging through the hills have
rendered well-nigh uncontrollable, a prosperous-looking Persian
traveller, returning from a pilgrimage to Meshed with his wives, family,
and servitors, quite a respectable-sized retinue, emerges from the
seclusion of his quarters to see the bicycle.
Of course he requests me to ride, sending his link-boys to bring out all
the farnoozes to supplement fair Luna's coy and inefficient beams; and
after the performance, the old gentleman promises to send me round a dish
of pillau. In due time the promised pillau comes round, an ample dish,
sufficient to satisfy even my present ravenous appetite, and after this
he sends round tea, lump sugar, and a samovar. The moujik turns to and
gets up steam in the samovar, and over tiny glasses of the cheering but
non-intoxicating beverage, he sings a Russian regimental song, and his
comrade, the Tabreez Turk, warbles the praises of Stamboul. But although
they make merry over the tea, methinks both of them would have made still
merrier over something stronger, for the moujik puts in a good share of
the evening talking about vodka consumed at Shahrood, and smacking his
lips at the retrospective bliss embodied in its consumption; while the
Turk from Tabreez catches me aside and asks mysteriously if my packages
contain any "raki" (arrack). Like the Ah wan caravansarai, the one at
Gusheh seems to draw the chilly winds from every direction, and I arise
from a rude couch, made wretchedly uncomfortable by draughts, the attacks
of insects, and the persistent determination of a horse to use my
prostrate form as a rest for his nose-bag, to find myself the possessor
of a sore throat.
Persian travellers are generally up and off before daylight, and the
clicking noise (Persian curry-combs are covered with small rings that
make a rattling noise when being used) of currying horses begins as early
as three o'clock. The attendants of the old gentleman of happy
remembrance in connection with last night's pillau and samovar, have been
busy for two hours, and his taktrowan and kajauehs are already occupied
and starting, when by the first gleam of awakening dawn I mount and wheel
eastward. A shallow, unbridged stream obstructs my path but a short
distance from Gusheh, and I manage to get in knee-deep in trying to avoid
the necessity of removing my footgear; I then wander several miles off
my road to an outlying village. This happy commencement of a new day is
followed by a variable road leading sometimes over stony or gravelly
plains where the wheeling varies through all the stages of goodness,
badness, and indifference, and sometimes through grazing grounds and
cultivable areas adjoining the villages.
Scattered about the grazing and arable country are now small towers of
refuge, loop-holed for defense, to which ryots working in the fields, or
shepherds tending their flocks, fled for safety in case of a sudden
appearance of Turcoman marauders. But a few years ago men hereabouts went
to plough, sow, or reap with a gun slung at their backs, and a few of
them reaching the shelter of one of these compact little mud towers were
able, through the loop-holes, to keep the Turcomans at bay until relief
arrived. The towers are of circular form, about twenty feet high and
fifteen in diameter; the entrance is a very small doorway, often a mere
hole to crawl into, and steps inside lead to the summit; some are roofed
in near the top, others are mere circular walls of mud. On grazing
grounds a lower wall often encompasses the tower, fencing in a larger
space that formed a corral for the flocks; the shepherds then, while
defending themselves, were also defending their sheep or goats. In the
more exposed localities these little towers of refuge are often but a
couple of hundred yards apart, thickly dotting the country in all
directions, while watch-towers are seen perched on peaks and points of
vantage, the whole scene speaking eloquently of the extraordinary
precautions these poor people were compelled to adopt for the
preservation of their lives and property. No wonder Russian intrigue
makes headway in Khorassan and all along the Turco-inan-Perso frontier,
for the people can scarcely help being favorably impressed by the
stoppage of Turcoman deviltry in their midst, and the wholesale
liberation of Persian slaves.
The town of Damghan is reached near noon, and I am not a little gratified
to learn that the telegraph-jee has been notified of my approach, and has
stationed his farrash at the entrance to the bazaar, so that I should
have no trouble in finding the office. This augurs well for the reception
awaiting me there, and I am accordingly not surprised to find him an
exceptionally affable youth, proud of a word or two of English he had
somehow acquired, and of his knowledge of how to properly entertain a
Ferenghi. This latter qualification assumes the eminently practical, and,
it is needless to add, acceptable form of a roast chicken, a heaping dish
of pillau, and sundry other substantial proofs of anticipatory
preparations. The telegraph-jee takes great pleasure in seeing roast
chicken mysteriously disappear, and the dish of pillau gradually diminish
in size; in fact, the unconcealed satisfaction afforded by these savory
testimonials of his cook's abilities give him such pleasure that he urges
me to remain his guest for a day and rest up. But Shahrood is only forty
miles away, and here I shall have the pleasure of meeting Mr. McIntyre,
before mentioned as line-inspector, who is making his temporary
headquarters at that city. Moreover, angry-looking storm-dogs have
accompanied the sun on his ante-meridian march to-day, and such
experience as mine at Lasgird has the effect of making one, if not
weather-wise, at least weather-wary.
In approaching Damghan, long before any other indications of the city
appear, twin minarets are visible, soaring above the stony plain like a
pair of huge pillars; these minars belong to the same mosque, and form a
conspicuous landmark for travellers and pilgrims in approaching Damghan
from any direction; at a distance they appear to rise up sheer from the
barren plain, the town being situated in a depression. Six farsakhs from
Damghan is the village of Tazaria, noted in the country round about for
the enormous size of the carrots grown there; the minarets of Damghan and
the extraordinary size of the Tazaria vegetables furnish the material for
a characteristic little Eastern story, current among the inhabitants.
Finding that people came from far and near to see the graceful minarets
of Damghan, and that nobody came to see Tazaria, the good people of that
neglected village became envious, and they reasoned among themselves and
said: "Why should Damghan have two minarets and Tazaria none?" So they
gathered together their pack-donkeys, their ropes and ladders, and a
large company of men, and reached Damghan in the silence and darkness of
the night, intending to pull down and carry off one of the minarets and
erect it in Tazaria. The ropes were fastened to the summit of the minar,
but at the first great pull the brick-work gave way and the top of the
tall minaret came tumbling down with a crash and clatter, killing several
of its would-be removers. The Damghan people turned out, and after
hearing the unhappy Tazarians' laments, some sarcastic citizen gave them
a few carrot-seeds, bidding them go home and sow them, and they could
grow all the minarets they wanted. The carrots grew famously, and the
villagers of Tazaria, instead of the promised minarets, found themselves
in possession of a new and useful vegetable that fetched a good price in
the Damghan bazaars. The Damghanians, meeting a Tazarian ryot coming in
with a donkey-load of these huge carrots, cannot resist twitting him
regarding the minars; but the now practical Tazarians no longer mourn the
absence of minarets in their village, and when twitted about it, reply:
"We have more minarets than you have, but our minarets grow downward and
are good to eat."
During the afternoon I pass many ruined villages and castles, said to
have been destroyed by an earthquake many years ago. Some few natives
find remunerative employment in excavating and washing over the dirt and
debris of the ruined castles, in which they find coins, rubies, agates,
turquoise, and women's ornaments; sometimes they unearth skeletons with
ornaments still attached. The sun shines out warm this afternoon, and its
genial rays are sufficiently tempting to induce the jackals to emerge
from their hiding-places and bask in its beaming smiles on the sunny side
of the ruins. Wherever there are ruins and skeletons and decay in Eastern
lands--and where are there not?--there also is sure to be found the
prowling and sneakish-looking jackal.
Shelter, and the usual rude accommodation, supplemented on this occasion
by a wandering luti and his vicious-looking baboon, as also a company of
riotous charvadars, who insist on singing accompaniments to the luti's
soul-harrowing tom-toming till after midnight, are obtained at the
caravansarai of Deh Mollah. From Deh Mollah it is only a couple of
farsakhs to Shahrood, and after the first three miles, which is slightly
upgrade and not particularly smooth, it is downgrade and very fair
wheeling the remainder of the distance. The road forks a couple of miles
from Shahrood, and while I am entering by one road, Mr. McIntyre is
leaving on horseback by the other to meet me, guessing, from word
received from Damghan, that I must have spent last night at Deh Mollah,
and would arrive at Shahrood this morning.
Only those who have experienced it know anything of the pleasure of two
Europeans meeting and conversing in a country like Persia, where the
habits and customs of the natives are so different, and, to most
travellers, uncongenial, and only to be tolerated for a time.
I have met Mr. Mclntyre in Teheran, so we are not total strangers, which,
of course, makes it still more agreeable. After the customary interchange
of news, and the discussion of refreshments, Mr. Mclntyre hands me a
telegram from Teheran, which bears a date several days old. It is from
the British Legation, notifying me that permission is refused to go
through the Turcoman country; an appendage from the Charge d'Affaires
suggests that I repair to Astrakhan and try the route through Siberia.
And this, then, is the result of General Melnikoff's genial smiles and
ready promises of assistance; after providing myself with proper money
and information for the Turkestan route, on the strength of the Russian
Minister's promises, I am overtaken, when three hundred miles away, with
a veto against which anything I might say or do would be of no avail!
Sultan Ahmed Mirza, a sou of Prince Anushirvan, is deputy governor of
Shahrood, responsible to his father; and ere I have arrived an hour the
usual request is sent round for a "tomasha," the word now used by people
wanting to see me ride, and which really means an exhibition. His place
is found in a brick court-yard with the usual central tank, and the airy
rooms of the building all opening upon it, and once again comes the
feeling of playing a rather ridiculous role, as I circle awkwardly around
the tank over very uneven bricks, and around short corners where an upset
would precipitate me into the tank--amid, I can't help thinking, "roars of
laughter." The Prince is very lavish of his flowery Persian compliments,
and says, "You English have now left nothing more to do but to bring the
dead back to life." In the court-yard my attention is called to a set of
bastinado poles and loops, and Mr. McIntyre asks the Prince if he hasn't
a prisoner on hand, so that he can give us a tomasha in return for the
one we are giving him; but it is now the Persian New Year, and the
prisoners have all been liberated.
Here, gentle reader, in Shahrood--but it now behooves us to be dark and
mysterious, and deal in hints and whispers, for the Persian proprieties
must not be ruthlessly violated and then as ruthlessly exposed to satisfy
the prying curiosity of far off Frangistan that would never do.
Behold, then, Mr. Mclntyre absent; behold all male humans absent save
myself and a couple of sable eunuchs, whose smooth, whiskerless faces
betray inward amusement at the extreme novelty of the situation, and we
all alone between the high brick walls that encircle the secrecy of an
inner court--and yet not all alone, fortell it in whispers--some half-dozen
shrouded female forms are clustered together in one corner. Yashmaks are
drawn aside, and plump oval faces and bright eyes revealed, faces brown
and soft of outline, eyes black, large and lustrous, with black lines
skillfully drawn to make them look still larger, and lashes deeply
stained to impart love and languor to their wondrous depths. Whisper it
not in Gath, and tell it not in the streets of Frangistan, that the
wondrous asp-i-awhan has proved an open sesame capable of revealing to an
inquisitive and all-observant Ferenghi the collective charms of a Persian
swell's harem!
We can imagine these ladies in the seclusion of the zenana hearing of the
Ferenghi and his wonderful iron horse, and overwhelmed with feminine
curiosity, with much coaxing and promising, obtaining reluctant consent
for a strictly secret and decorous tomasha, with covered faces and no one
present but the attendant eunuchs and the Ferenghi, who, fortunately,
will soon leave the country, never to return. Mohammedan women are merely
overgrown children, and the promise of strict decorousness is forgotten
or ignored the moment the tomasha begins; and the fun and the wickedness
of removing their yashmaks in the presence of a Ferenghi is too rare an
opportunity to be missed, and, no doubt, furnishes them with material for
amusing conversation for many a day after. Rare fun these ladies think it
to uncover their olive faces and let the Ferenghi see their beauty; the
eunuchs are generally indulgent to their charges whenever they can safely
be so, and on this occasion they content themselves with looking on and
saying nothing. After seeing me ride, the ladies cluster boldly around
and examine the bicycle, chatting freely among themselves the while
concerning its capabilities; but some of the younger ladies regard me
with fully as much curiosity as the bicycle, for never before did they
have such an opportunity of scrutinizing a Ferenghi.
And now, while granted the privilege of this little revelation, we must
be very careful not to reveal the secret of whose harem we have seen
unveiled, and whose inner court our paran wheels have pressed; for the
whirligig of time brings about strange things, and apparently trifling
things that have been indiscreetly published by travellers in books at
home, have sometimes found their way back to the far East, and caused
embarrassment and chagrin to people who treated them with hospitality and
respect.
CHAPTER IV.
THROUGH KHORASSAN.
Shahrood is at the exit from the mountains of the caravan route from
Asterabad, Mazanderan, and the Caspian coast. The mountains overlooking
it are bare and rocky. A good trade seems to be done by several firms of
Russian-Armenians in exporting wool, cotton, and pelts to Russia, and
handling Russian iron and petroleum. But for the iniquitous method of
taxation, which consists really of looting the producing classes of all
they can stand, the volume of trade here might easily be tenfold what it
is.
Shahrood is, or rather was, one of the "four stations of terror,"
Mijamid, Miandasht, and Abassabad being the other three, so called on
account of their exposed position and the consequent frequency of
Turcoman attacks. Even nowadays they have their little ripples of
excitement; rumors of Turcoman raids are heard in the bazaars, and news
was brought in and telegraphed to Teheran a week ago that fifteen
thousand sheep had been carried off from a district north of the
mountains. Word comes back that a regiment of soldiers is on its way to
chastise the Turcomans and recover the property; what really will happen,
will be a horde of soldiers staying there long enough to devour what few
sheep the poor people have left, and then returning without having seen,
much less chastised, a Turcoman. The Persian Government will notify the
Russian Minister of the misdoings of the Turcomans, and ask to have them
punished and the sheep restored; the Russian Minister will reply that
these particular Turcomans were Persian subjects, and nothing further
will be done.
Mr. Mclntyre is a canny Scot, a Royal Engineer, and weighs fully three
hundred pounds; but with this avoirdupois he is far from being inactive,
and together we ramble up the Asterabad Pass to take a look at the Bostam
Valley on the other side. The valley isn't much to look at; no verdure,
only a brown, barren plain, surrounded on all sides by equally brown,
barren mountains. In the evening the Prince sends round a pheasant, and
shortly after calls himself and partakes of tea and cigarettes,
I accept Mr. McIntyre's invitation to remain and rest up, but only for
another day, my experience being that, when on the road, one or two days'
rest is preferable to a longer period; one gets rested without getting
out of condition. We take a stroll through the bazaar in the morning, and
call in at the wine-shop of a Russian-Armenian trader named Makerditch,
who keeps arrack and native wine, and sample some of the latter. In his
shop is a badly stuffed Mazanderaii tiger, and the walls of the private
sitting-room are decorated with rude, old-fashioned prints of saints and
scriptural scenes. It is now the Persian New Year, and bright new
garments and snowy turbans impart a gay appearance to the throngs in the
bazaar, for everybody changed his wardrobe from tip to toe on
eid-i-noo-roos (evening before New Year's Day), although the "great
unwashed" of Persian society change never a garment for the next twelve
months. Considering that the average lower-class Persian puts in a good
share of this twelve months in the unprofitable process of scratching
himself, one would think it must be an immense relief for him to cast
away these old habiliments with all their horrid load of filth and
vermin, and don a clean, new outfit; but the new ones soon get as thickly
tenanted as the old; and many even put the new garments on over certain
of the old ones, caring nothing for comfort and cleanliness, and
everything for appearance. The Persian New Year's holiday lasts thirteen
days, and on the evening of the thirteenth day everybody goes out into
the fields and plucks flowers and grasses to present to his or her
friends.
Governors of provinces who retain their position in consequence of having
sent satisfactory tribute to the Shah, and ruled with at least a
semblance of justice, get presents of new robes on New Year's Day, and
those who have been unfortunate enough to lose the royal favor get
removed: New Year's Day brings either sorrow or rejoicing to every
Persian official's house.
The morning of my departure opens bright and warm after a thunder-storm
the previous evening, and Mr. Mclntyre accompanies me to the outskirts of
the city, to put me on the right road to Mijamid, my objective point for
the day, eleven farsakhs distant. The streets are, of course, muddy and
unridable, and ere the suburbs are overcome a messenger overtakes us from
the Prince, begging me to return and drink tea with him before starting.
"Tell the Prince, the sahib sends salaams, but cannot spare the time to
return," replies my companion, who knows Persian thoroughly. "You must
come," says the messenger, "for the Khan of Bostam has arrived to pay the
New Year's salaam to the Prince, and the Prince wants you to show him the
bicycle."
"'Must come!' Tell the Prince that when the sahib gets fairly started, as
he is now, with his bicycle, he wouldn't turn back for the Shah himself."
The messenger looks glum and crestfallen, as though very reluctant to
return with such a message, a message that probably sounds to him
strangely disrespectful, if not positively treasonable; but he sees the
uselessness of bandying words, and so turns about, feeling and looking
very foolish, for he addressed us very boldly and confidently before the
whole crowd when he overtook us.
A few small streams have to be crossed on leaving Shahrood for the cast;
splendid rivulets of clear, cold water in which there ought to be trout.
After these streams the road launches at once on to a level camel-thorn
plain, the gravelled surface of which provides excellent wheeling. An
outlying village and caravanserai is passed through at a couple of
farsakhs, where, as might be expected in the "district of terror," are
hundreds of the little towers of refuge. This village would be in a very
exposed position, and it looks as though it is but just now being rebuilt
and repopulated after a period of ruin and desertion. Beyond this village
the towers of refuge and other signs of human occupation disappear; the
uncultivated desert reigns supreme on either hand; but the wheeling
continues fairly good, although a strong headwind somewhat impedes my
progress. Beyond the level plain and the lower hills to the north are the
snowy heights of the Elburz range; a less ambitious range of mountains
forms a barrier some twenty miles to the south, and in the distant
southeast there looms up a dark, massive pile that recalls at a glance
memories of Elk Mountain, Wyoming; though upon a closer inspection there
is no doubt but that the densely wooded slopes of our old acquaintance of
the Rockies would be found wanting.
Twenty miles of this level plain is traversed, and I find myself gazing
curiously at a range of mica-flecked hills off to the right. These hills
present a very curious appearance; the myriads of flakes of mica
scattered all about glitter and glint in the bright sunlight as if they
might be diamonds, and it requires but an easy effort of the imagination
to fancy one's self in some strange, rich land of the "gorgeous East,"
where precious jewels are scattered about like stones. These
mica-spangled hills bear about the same relation to what one's
imagination might conceive them to be as the "gorgeous East" as it
actually exists does to the "gorgeous East" we read of in fairytales.
Beyond the mica hills, I pass through a stretch of abandoned cultivation,
where formerly existed fields and ditches, and villages with an abundance
of portable property tempted Turkoman raiders to guide their matchless
chargers hither. But small outlying settlements hereabout were precarious
places to live in, and the persistent damans generally caused them to be
abandoned entirely from time to time.
The road has averaged good to-day, and Mijamid is reached at four
o'clock. Seeking the shelter of the chapar-khana, that devoted building
is soon surrounded by a new-dressed and accordingly a good-natured and
vociferous crowd shouting--"Sowar shuk! sowar shuk! tomasha!
tomasha!"
As I survey the grinning, shouting multitude from my retreat on the roof,
and note the number of widely-opened mouths, the old wicked thoughts
about hot potatoes and dexterity in throwing them persist in coming to
the fore. Several scrimmages and quarrels occur between the chapar-jee
and his shagirds, and the crowd, who persist in invading the premises,
and the tumult around is something deafening, for it is holiday times and
the people feel particularly self-indulgent and disinclined for
self-denial. In the midst of the uproar, from out the chaotic mass of
rainbow-colored costumes, there forms a little knot of mollahs in huge
snowy turbans and flowing gowns of solid blue or green, and at their head
the gray-bearded patriarchal-looking old khan of the village in his
flowered robe of office from the governor. These gay-looking, but
comparatively sober-sided representatives of the village, endeavor to
have the crowd cease their clamorous importunities--an attempt,
however, that results in signal failure--and they constitute
themselves a delegation to approach me in a respectful and decorous
manner, and ask me to ride for the satisfaction of themselves and the
people.
The profound salaams and good taste of these eminently respectable
personages are not to be resisted, and after satisfying them, the khan
promises to provide me with supper, which at a later hour turns up in the
form of the inevitable dish of pillau.
Two miles on the road next morning and it begins raining; at five miles
it develops into a regular downpour, that speedily wets me through. A
small walled village is finally reached and shelter obtained beneath its
ample portals, a place that seems to likewise be the loafing-place of the
village. The entrance is a good-sized room, and here on wet days the men
can squat about and smoke, and at the same time see everything that
passes on the road. The village is defended by a strong mud wall some
thirty feet high, and strengthened with abutting towers at frequent
intervals; the only entrance is the one massive door, and inside there is
plenty of room for all the four-footed possessions of the people; the
houses are the usual little mud huts with thatched beehive roofs, built
against the wall. The flocks of goats and sheep are admitted inside every
evening, and taken out again to graze in the morning; the appearance of
the interior is that of a very filthy, undrained, and utterly neglected
farmyard, and as no breath of wind ever passes through it, or comes any
nearer the ground than the top of the thirty-foot wall, living in its
reeking, pent-up exhalations must be something abominable.
Such a place as this in Persia would be fairly swarming with noxious
insect life, of which fleas would be the most tolerable variety, and
two-thirds of the people would be suffering from chronic ophthalmia. This
little village, doubtless, had enough to do a few years ago to maintain
its existence, even with its remarkably strong walls; and on the highest
mountain peaks round about they point out to me their watch-towers, where
sentinels daily scanned the country round for the wild horsemen they so
much dreaded. Four men and three women among the little crowd gathered
about me here, are pointed out as having been released from slavery by
the Russians, when they captured Khiva and liberated the Persian slaves
and sent them home. Every village and hamlet along this part of the
country contains its quota of returned captives who, no doubt, entertain
lively recollections of being carried off and sold.
Soon after my arrival here, a little, weazen-faced, old seyud, in a
threadbare and badly-faded green gown, comes hobbling through the rain
and the mahogany-colored slush of the village yard to the gate. Everybody
rises respectfully as he comes in, and the old fellow, accustomed to
having this deference paid him by everybody about him, and wishing to
show courtesy to a Ferenghi, motions for me to keep seated. Seeing that I
had no intention of rising, this courtesy was somewhat superfluous, but
the incident serves to show how greatly these simple villagers are
impressed with the idea of a seyud's superiority, to say nothing of the
seyud's assumption of the same. They explain to me that the little,
unwashed, unkempt, and well-nigh unclad specimen of humanity examining
the bicycle is a seyud, with the manner of people pointing out a being of
unapproachable superiority. Still, looking at the poor old fellow's rags,
and remembering that it is new year and the time for a change of raiment,
one cannot help thinking, "Old fellow, you evidently come in for more
resect, after all, than material assistance, and would, no doubt,
willingly exchange a good deal of the former for a little of the latter."
Still, one must not be too confident of this; the bodily requirements of
a wrinkled old seyud would be very trifling, while his egotism would, on
the other hand, be insufferable. This is a grazing village chiefly, and
the gravelly desert comes close up to the walls, so that there is no
difficulty about pushing on immediately after it ceases raining.
Two farsakhs of variable wheeling through a belt of low hills and broken
country, and two more over the level Miandasht Plain, and the
caravanserai of Miandasht is reached. Here the village, the telegraph
office and everything is enclosed within the protecting walls of an
immense Shah Abbas caravanserai, a building capable of affording shelter
and protection to five thousand people. In the old--and yet not so very
old--dangerous days, it was necessary, for safety, that travellers and
pilgrims should journey together through this section of country in large
caravans, otherwise disaster was sure to overtake them; and Shah Abbas
the Great built these huge caravanserais for their accommodation. In
deference to the memory of this monarch as a builder of caravanserais all
over the country, any large serai is nowadays called a Shah Abbas
caravanserai, whether built by him or not. Certainly not less than three
hundred pack-camels, besides other animals, are resting and feeding, or
being loaded up for the night march as I ride up, their myriad clanging
bells making a din that comes floating across the plain to meet me as I
approach.
Miandasht is the first place in Khorassan proper, and among the motley
gathering of charmdars, camel-drivers, pilgrims, travellers, villagers
and hangers-on about the serai, are many Khorassanis wearing huge
sheepskin busbies, similar to the head-gear of the Roumanians and Tabreez
Turks of Ovahjik and the Perso-Turkish border. Most of these busbies are
black or brown, but some affect a mixture of black and white, a piebald
affair that looks very striking and peculiar.
The telegraph-jee here turns out to be a person of immense importance in
his own estimation, and he has evidently succeeded in impressing the same
belief upon the unsophisticated minds of the villagers, who, apparently,
have come to regard him as little less than "monarch of all he surveys."
True, there isn't much to survey at Miaudasht, everything there being
within the caravanserai walls; but whenever the telegraph-jee emerges
from the seclusion of his little office, it is to blossom forth upon the
theatre of the crowd's admiring glances in the fanciful habiliments of a
la-de-da Persian swell. Very punctilious as regards etiquette, instead of
coming forth in a spontaneous manner to see who I am and look at the
bicycle, he pays me a ceremonious visit at the chapar-khana half an hour
later. In this visit he is preceded by his farrash, and he walks with a
magnificent peacock strut that causes the skirts of his faultless
roundabout to flop up and down, up and down, in rhythmic accompaniment to
his steps. Apart from his insufferable conceit, however, he tries to make
himself as agreeable as possible, and after tea and cigarettes, I give
him and the people a tomasha, at the conclusion of which he asks
permission to send in my supper.
The room in which I spend the evening is a small, dome-roofed apartment,
in which a circular opening in the apex of the dome is expected to fill
the triple office of admitting light, ventilation, and carrying off smoke
from the fire; the natural consequence being that the room is dark,
unventilated, and full of smoke. Now and then some determined sightseer
on the roof fills this hole up completely with his head, in an effort to
peer down through the smoke and obtain a glimpse of myself or the
bicycle, or a mischievous youngster, unable to resist the temptation,
drops down a stone.
The shagird-chapar here is a man who has been to Askabad and seen the
railroad; and when the inevitable question of Russian versus English
marifet (mechanical skill) comes up, he endeavors to impress upon the
open-mouthed listeners the marvellous character of the locomotive. "It is
a wonderful atesh-gharri" (fire-wagon), he would say, "and runs on an
awhan rah (iron road); the charvadar puts in atesh and ob. It goes chu,
chu! chu!! ch-ch-ch-chu-ch-u-u-u!!! spits fire and smoke, pulls a
long-khylie long-caravan of forgans with it, and goes ten farsakhs an
hour." But in order to thoroughly appreciate this travelled and highly
enlightened person's narrative, one must have been present in the
smoke-permeated room, and by the nickering light of a camel-thorn fire
have watched the gesticulations of the speaker and the rapt attention of
the listeners; must have heard the exclamations of "Mashal-l-a-h!" escape
honestly and involuntarily from the parted lips of wonder-stricken
auditors as they endeavored to comprehend how such things could possibly
be. And yet there is no doubt that, five minutes afterward, the verdict
of each listener, to himself, was that the shagird-chapar, in describing
to them the locomotive, was lying like a pirate--or a Persian--and, after
all, they couldn't conceive of anything more wonderful than the bicycle
and the ability to ride it, and this they had seen with their own eyes.
It is the change of the moon, and a most wild-looking evening; the sun
sets with a fiery forge glowing about it, and fringing with an angry
border the banks of darksome clouds that mingle their weird shapes with
the mountain masses to the west, the wind sighs and moans through the
archways and menzils of the huge caravanserai, breathing of rain and
unsettled weather. These warning signals are not far in advance, for a
drenching rain soaks and saturates everything during the night,
converting the parallel trails of the pilgrim road into twenty narrow,
silvery streaks, that glisten like trails of glass ahead, as I wheel
along them to meet the newly-risen sun. It is a morning of hurrying,
scudding clouds and fitful sunshine, but fresh and bracing after the
rain; a country of broken hills and undulating road is reached in an
hour; the broken hills are covered with blossoming shrubs and green young
camel-thorn, in which birds are cheerily piping.
Six farsakhs bring me to Abbasabad, the last of the four stations of
terror. A lank villager is on the lookout a couple of miles west of the
place, the people having been apprised of my coming by some travellers
who left Miandasht yesterday evening. Tucking the legs of his pantaloons
in his waistband, leaving his legs bare and unencumbered, he follows me
at a swinging trot into the village, and pilots me to the caravanserai.
The population of the place are found occupying their housetops, and
whatever points of vantage they can climb to, awaiting my appearance,
their curiosity having been wrought to the highest pitch by their
informant's highly exaggerated accounts of what they might expect to see.
The prevailing color of the female costume is bright red, and the swarms
of these gayly-dressed people congregated on the housetops, and mingled
promiscuously with the dark gray of the mud walls and domes, makes a
picture long to be remembered.
And long also to be remembered is the reception awaiting me inside the
caravanserai yard--the surging, pushing, struggling, shouting mob, among
whom I notice, with some wonderment and speculation, a far larger
proportion of blue-eyed people than I have hitherto seen in Persia. Upon
inquiry it is learned that Abbasabad is a colony of Georgians, planted
and subsidized here by Shah Abbas the Great, as a check on the Turkomans,
whose frequent alamans rendered the roads hereabout well-nigh impassable
for caravans. These warlike mountaineers were brought from the Caucasus
and colonized here, with lands, exemption from taxes, and given an annual
subsidy. They were found to be of good service as a check on the
Turkomans, but were not much of an improvement upon the Turkomans
themselves in many respects. As seen in the caravanserai to-day, they
seem a turbulent, headstrong crowd of people, accustomed to be petted,
and to do pretty much as they please.
At the caravanserai is a traveller who says he hails from the Pishin
Valley, and he produces a certificate in English, recommending him as a
stone mason. The certificate settles all doubts of his being from India,
for were one to meet an Hindostani in the classic shades of purgatory
itself, he would immediately produce a certificate recommending him for
something or other. As the crowd surge and struggle for some position
around me where they can enjoy the exquisite delight of seeing me sip
tiny glasses of scalding hot tea, prepared by the enterprising individual
who met me two miles out, the Pishin Valley man tries to look amused at
them, and to rise superior to the situation, as becomes a person to whom
a Sahib, and whatever wonderful things he may possess, are nothing
extraordinary. The crowd seem very loath to let such an extraordinary
thing as the bicycle and its rider depart from among them so soon,
although at the same time anxious to see me speed along the smooth,
straight trails that fortunately lead directly from the caravanserai
eastward. Scores of the shouting, yelling mob race, bare-footed and
bare-legged, over the stones and gravel alongside the bicycle, until I
can put on a spurt and out-distance them, which I take care to do as soon
as practicable, thankful to get away and eat the bread pocketed in
disgust at the caravanserai in the peace and quietude of the desert.
Beyond Abbasabad my road skirts Mazinan Lake to the north, passing
between the slimy mud-flats of the lake shore and the ever-present Elburz
foot-hills, and then through several wholly ruined or partially ruined
villages to Mazinan, where I arrive about sunset, my wheel yet again a
mass of mud, for the Mazinan lake country is a muddy hole in spring. A
drizzling rain ushers in the dusky shades of the evening, as I repair to
the chaparkhana, a wretched hole, in a most dilapidated condition. The
balakhana is little better than being out of doors; the roof leaks like a
colander, the windows are mere unglazed holes in the wall, and the doors
are but little better than the windows. It promises to be a cold,
draughty, comfortless night, and the prospects for supper look gloomy
enough in the light of smoky camel-thorn and no samovar to make a cup of
tea.
Such is the cheerless prospect confronting me after a hard day's run,
when, soon after dark, a man arrives with a thrice-welcome invitation
from a Russian officer, who he says is staying at the caravanserai. The
officer, he says, has pillau, kabobs, wine, plenty of everything, and
would be glad if I would bring my machine and come and accept his
hospitality for the night. Under the circumstances nothing could be more
welcome news than this; and picturing to myself a pleasant evening with a
genial, hospitable gentleman, I take the bicycle down the slippery and
broken mud stairway, and follow my guide through drizzling rain and
darkness, over ditches and through miry byways, to the caravanserai.
The officer is found squatting, Asiatic-like, on his menzil floor, his
overcoat over his shoulders. He is watching his cook broiling kabobs for
his supper. It is a cheery, hopeful prospect, the glowing charcoal fire
sparkling in response to the vigorous waving of half a saddle-flap, the
savory, sizzling kabobs and the carpeted menzil, in comparison with the
dreary tumble-down place I have just left. My first impression of the
officer himself, however, is scarcely so favorable as my impression of
the picture in which he is set--the picture as just described; a sinister
leer characterizes the expression of his face, and what appears like a
nod, with an altogether unnecessary amount of condescension in it,
characterizes his greeting. Hopping down to the ground, lamp in hand, he
examines the bicycle minutely, and then indirectly addressing the
by-standers, he says, "Pooh! this thing was made in Tiflis; there's
hundreds of them in Tiflis." Having delivered himself of this lying
statement, he hops up on the menzil front again and, without paying the
slightest attention to me, resumes his squatting position at the fire,
and his occupation of watching the preparations of his cook. Nothing is
more evident to me than that he had never before seen a bicycle, and
astounded at this conduct on the part of an officer who doubtless thinks
himself a civilized being, even though he might not understand anything
of our own conception of an "officer and a gentleman," I begin looking
around for an explanation from the fellow who brought me the invitation,
thinking there must be some mistake. The man has disappeared and is
nowhere to be found.
The chapar-jee accompanied us to the caravanserai, and seeing that this
man has bolted, and that the Russian officer's intentions toward me are
anything but hospitable, he calls the missing man--or the officer, I
don't know which--a pedar suktar (son of a burnt father), and
suggests returning to the cold comfort of the bala-khana. My own feelings
upon realizing that this wretched, unscrupulous Muscovite has craftily
designed and executed this plan for no other purpose but to insult and
humiliate one whom he took for granted to be an Englishman, in the eyes
of the Persian travellers present, I prefer to pass over and leave to the
reader's imagination. After sleeping on it and thinking it over, early
next morning I returned to the caravanserai, bent on finding the fellow
who brought the invitation, giving him a thrashing, and seeing if the
officer would take it up in his behalf. In the morning, the cossacks said
he had gone away; whether gone away or hiding somewhere in the
caravanserai, he was nowhere to be found; which perhaps was just as well,
for the affair might have ended in bloodshed, and in a fight the chances
would have been decidedly against myself.
This incident, disagreeable though it be to think of, is instructive as
showing the possibilities for mean and contemptible action that may lurk
beneath the uniform of a Russian officer. Russian officers as a general
thing, however, it is but fair to add, would show up precisely the
reverse of this fellow, under similar circumstances, being genial and
hospitable to a fault; still, I venture that in no other army in the
world, reckoning itself civilized, could be found even one officer
capable of displaying just such a spirit as this.
The unwelcome music of pattering rain and flowing water in the concert I
have to sit and listen to all the forenoon, and a glance outside is
rewarded by the dreariest of prospects. The landscape as seen from my
lone and miserable lookout, consists of gray mud-fields and gray
mud-ruins, wet and slimy with the constant rains; occasional
barley-fields mosaic the dreary prospect with bright green patches, but
across them all--the mud-flats, the ruins, and the barley-fields--the
driving rain sweeps remorselessly along, and the wind moans dismally.
There is only one corner of my room proof against the drippings from the
roof, and through the wretched apologies for doors and windows the
driving rain comes in. Everything seems to go wrong in this particular
place. I obtain tea and sugar, but there is no samovar, and the
chapar-jee attempts to make it in an open kettle; the result is sweetened
water, lukewarm and smoky. I then send for pomegranates, which turn out
to be of a sour, uneatable variety; but worse than all is the dreary
consciousness of being hopelessly imprisoned for an uncertain period.
It grows gradually colder, and toward noon the rain changes to snow; the
cold and the penetrating snow drive me into the shelter of the
ill-smelling stables. It blows a perfect hurricane all the afternoon,
accompanied by fitful squalls of snow and hail, and the same programme
continues the greater part of the night. But in the morning I am thankful
to discover that the wind has dried the surface sufficiently to enable me
to escape from my mud-environed prison and its uncongenial associations.
Before getting many miles from Mazinan, I encounter the startling novelty
of streams of liquid mud, rolling their thick, yellow flood over the
plain in treacly waves, travelling slowly, like waves of molten lava. The
mud is only a few inches deep, but the streams overspread a considerable
breadth of country, as my road is some miles from where they leave the
mountains, and they seem to have no well-defined channels to flow in. A
stream of slimy, yellow mud, two hundred yards wide, is a most
disagreeable obstacle to overcome with a bicycle; but confined in narrow,
deep channels, the conditions would be infinitely worse. It is a dreary
and forbidding stretch of country hereabout, the carcasses of camels that
have dropped exhausted by the roadside, are frequently passed, and
jackals feasting on them slink off at my approach, watch my progress past
with evident impatience, and then return again to their feast. Occasional
stretches of very fair wheeling are passed over, and at six farsakhs I
reach Mehr, the usual combination of brick caravanserai and mud village.
Here a halt is made for tea and such rude refreshments as are obtainable,
consuming them in the presence of the usual sore-eyed and
miserable-looking crowd; more than one poor wretch appealing to me to
cure his rapidly-failing sight. A gleam of warm sunshine brightens my
departure from Mehr, and after shaking off several following horsemen,
the going seems quite pleasant, the wheeling being very good indeed. The
mountains off to the left are variegated and beautiful on the lower and
intermediate slopes, and are crested with snow; scudding cloudlets, whose
multiform shadows are continually climbing up and over the mountains,
produce a pleasing kaleidoscopic effect, and here and there a sunny,
glistening peak rises superior to the changeful scenes below.
Sheepskin-busbied shepherds are tending flocks of very peculiar-looking
sheep on this plain, the first of the kind I have noticed. The fatty
continuation of the body, popularly regarded as an abnormal growth of
tail, is wanting; but what is lacking in this respect is amply
compensated for in the pendulous ears, these members hanging almost to
the ground; they have a goatish appearance generally, and may possibly be
the result of a cross. Herds of antelope also frequent this locality,
which by and by develops into a level mud-plain that affords smooth and
excellent wheeling, and over which I take the precaution of making the
best time possible, conscious that a few minutes' rain would render it
impassable for a bicycle; and wild wind-storms are even now careering
over it, accompanied by spits of snow and momentary squalls of hail.
A lone minar, looming up directly ahead like a tall factory chimney,
indicates my approach to Subzowar. The minaret is reached by sunset; it
turns out to be a lone shrine of some imam, from which it is yet two
farsakhs to Subzowar. The wheeling from this point, however, is very
good, and I roll into Subzowar, or, at least, up to its gate, for
Subzowar is a walled city, shortly after dark. Sherab (native wine) they
tell me, is obtainable in the bazaar, but when I inquire the price per
bottle, with a view of sending for one, several eager aspirants for the
privilege of fetching it shout out different prices, the lowest figure
mentioned being three times the actual price. Being rather indifferent
about the doubtful luxury of drinking wine for the amusement of an
eagerly curious crowd, which I know only too well beforehand will be my
unhappy portion, I conclude to chagrin and disappoint the whole dishonest
crew by doing without. One gets so thoroughly disgusted with the
ever-present trickery, dishonesty, and prying, unrestrained curiosity of
the ragged, sore-eyed and garrulous crowds that gather about one at every
halting place, that a person actually comes to prefer a mere crust of
bread in peace by a road-side pool to the best a city bazaar affords.
A well-dressed individual makes his salaam and intrudes his person upon
the scene of my early preparations to depart, on the following morning,
and, when I start, takes upon himself the office of conducting me through
the labyrinthian bazaar and to the gate of exit beyond. I am wondering
somewhat who this individual may be, and wherefore the officiousness of
his demeanor to the crowd at our heels; but his mission is soon revealed,
for on the way out he pilots me into the court-yard of the Reis, or mayor
of the city. The Reis receives me with the glad and courteous greeting of
a person desirous of making himself agreeable and of creating a favorable
impression; trays of sweetmeats are produced, and tea is served up in
little porcelain cups.
As soon as tea and sweetmeats and kalians appear on the board, mollahs
and seyuds mysteriously begin to put in an appearance likewise, filing
noiselessly in and taking their places near or distant from the Reis,
according to their respective rank and degree of holiness. My
observations everywhere in the Land of the Lion and the Sun all tend to
the conclusion that whenever and wherever a samovar of tea begins to sing
its cheery and aromatic song, and the soothing hubble-bubble of the
kalian begins telling its seductive tale of solid comfort and social
intercourse, a huge green or white turban is certain to appear on the
scene, a robed figure steps out of its slippers at the door, glides
noiselessly inside, puts its hand on its stomach, salaams, and drops, as
silently as a ghost might, in a squatting attitude among the guests.
Hardly has this one taken his position than another one appears at the
door and goes through precisely the same programme, followed shortly
afterward by another, and yet others; these foxy-looking members of the
Persian priesthood always seem to me to possess the faculty of scenting
these little occasions from afar and of following their noses to the
place with unerring precision.
Upon emerging from the shelter of the city and adjacent ruins, I find
myself confronted by a furious head-wind, against which it is quite
impossible to ride, and almost impossible to trundle. During the forenoon
I meet on the road a disgraced official, in the person of the
Asaf-i-dowleh, Governor-General of Khorassan, returning to Teheran from
Meshed, having been recalled at New Year's by the Shah to give an account
of himself for "oppressing the people, insulting the Prophet, and
intriguing with the Russians." The Asaf-i-dowleh made himself very
obnoxious to the priests and people of the holy city by arresting a
criminal within the place of refuge at Imam Riza's tomb, and by an
outrageous devotion to his own pecuniary interests at the public expense.
Riots occurred, the mob taking possession of the telegraph-office and
smashing the windows, because they fancied their petition to the Shah was
being tampered with. A timely rain-storm dispersed the mob and gave time
for the Shah's reply to arrive, promising the Asaf-i-dowleh's removal and
disgrace. The ex-Governor is in a carriage drawn by four grays; his own
women are in gayly gilded taktrowans, upholstered with crimson satin; the
women of his followers occupy several pairs of kajavehs, and the
household goods of the party follow behind in a number of huge Russian
forgans or wagons, each drawn by four mules abreast. Besides these are a
long string of pack-camels, mules, and attendants on horseback, forming
altogether the most imposing cavalcade I have met on a Persian road. How
they manage to get the heavily loaded forgans and the Governor's carriage
over such places as the pass near Lasgird is something of a
mystery--but there may be another route--at any rate, hundreds of
villagers would be called out to assist.
An opportunity also presents this morning of seeing the amount of
obstinacy and perverseness that manages to find lodgement within the
unsightly curves and angles of a runaway camel. A riding-camel, led by
its owner, scares at the bicycle, and, breaking away, leads him a lively
chase through a belt of low sand ridges near the road, jolting various
packages off his back as he runs. Every time the man gets almost within
seizing distance of the rope, the contrary camel starts off again in a
long, awkward lope, slowing up again, as though maliciously inviting his
owner to try it over again, when he has covered a couple of hundred
yards. These manoeuvres are repeated again and again, until the chase has
extended to perhaps four miles, when a party of travellers assist in
rounding him up; the man then has to re-traverse the whole four miles and
gather up the things.
A late luncheon of bread, warm from the oven, is obtained at the village
of Lafaram, where I likewise obtain a peep behind the scenes of everyday
village life, and see something of their mode of baking bread. The walled
village of Lafaram presents a picture of manure heaps, holes of filthy
water, mud-hovels, naked, sore eyed youngsters, unkempt, unwashed,
bedraggled females, goats, chickens, and all the unsavory elements that
enter into the composition of a wretched, semi-civilized community. With
bare, uncombed heads, bare-armed, bare-breasted, and bare-limbed, and
with their nakedness scarcely hidden beneath a few coarse rags, some of
the women are engaged in making and baking bread, and others in the
preparation of tezek from cow manure and chopped straw. In carrying on
these two occupations the women mingle, chat, and help each other with
happy-go-lucky indifference to consequences, and with a breezy
unconsciousness of there being anything repulsive about the idea of
handling hot cakes with one hand and tezek with the other. The ovens are
huge jars partially sunk in the ground; fire is made inside and the jar
heated; flat cakes of dough are then stuck in the inside of the jar, a
few minutes sufficing for the baking. The hand and arm the woman inserts
inside the heated jar is wrapped with old rags and frequently dipped in a
jar of water standing by to keep it cooled; the bread thus baked tastes
very good when fresh, but it requires a stomach rendered unsqueamish by
dire necessity to relish it after seeing it baked.
The plain beyond Lafaram assumes the character of an acclivity, that in
four farsakhs terminates in a pass through a spur of hills. The adverse
wind blows furiously all day and shows no signs of abating as the dusk of
evening settles down over the landscape. A wayside caravanserai is
reached at the entrance to the pass, and I determine to remain till
morning. Here I meet with a piece of good fortune in a small way, in the
shape of a leg of wild goat, obtained from a native Nimrod; a thin rod of
iron, obtained from the serai-jee, serves for a skewer, and I spend the
evening in roasting and eating wild-goat kabobs, while a youth fans the
little charcoal fire for me with the sole of an old geiveh.
CHAPTER V.
MESHED THE HOLY.
Warning spits of snow accompany my early morning departure from the
wayside caravanserai, and it quickly develops into a blinding snow-storm
that effectually obscures the country around, although melting as it
touches the ground.
A mile from the caravanserai the trails fork, and, taking the wrong one,
I wander some miles up the mountains ere discovering my mistake.
Retracing my way, the right road is finally taken; but the gale increases
in violence, the cold is numbing to unprotected hands and ears, and the
wind and driving snow difficult to face. At one point the trail leads
through a morass, in which are two dead horses, swamped in attempting to
cross, and near by lies an abandoned camel, lying in the mud and wearily
munching at a heap of kali (cut barley-straw) placed before him by his
owners before leaving him to his kismet; perchance with a forlorn hope
that he might pull through and finally regain his feet.
I have a narrow escape from swamping in the treacherous morass myself,
sinking knee-deep in the slimy, oozing mud-mass, pulling off my geivehs
and having no end of trouble in recovering them.
Shurab is reached about noon, where the customary crowd and customary
rude accommodations await me. Quite an unaccustomed luxury, however, is
obtained at Shurab--a substance made from grapes, called sheerah,
which resembles thin molasses. A communal dish, which I see the
chapar-jee and his sliagirds prepare for themselves and eat this evening,
consists of one pint of sheerah, half that quantity of grease, a handful
of chopped onions and a quart of water. This awful mixture is stewed for
a few minutes and then poured over a bowl of broken bread; they then
gather around and eat it with their hands--that they also eat it with
great gusto goes without saying.
Opium smoking appears to be indulged in to a great extent here, two out
of the three chapar men putting in a good portion of their time "hitting"
the seductive pipe, and tinkering with their opium-smoking apparatus.
They only have one outfit between them; both of them are half blind with
ophthalmia, and the bane of their wretched existence seems to be a
Russian candle-lamp, with a broken globe, that persists in falling apart
whenever they attempt to use it--which, by the by, is well-nigh all
the time--in manipulating the opium needle and pipe. Observing them
from my rude shake-down, after supper, bending persistently over this
broken, or ever-breaking lamp, their sore eyes and shrunken features, the
suzzle-suzzle of the opium as they suck it into the primer and inhale the
fumes--the indescribable odor of the drug pervading the
room--all this would seem to be a picture of an ideal Chinese opium
den rather than of a chapar-khana in Persia.
A broken bridge and miles of deep mud not far ahead has been the burthen
of information gathered from the villagers during the afternoon, and the
chapar-jee urges upon me the necessity of employing men and horses to
carry me and the bicycle across these obstructions into Nishapoor.
Preferring to take my chances of getting through, however, I pay no heed
to these warnings, well aware that the chapar-jee's interest in the
matter begins and ends in the fact that he has horses to hire himself.
In imitation of my example yesterday, I wander off the proper road again
this morning, taking a road that leads to an abandoned ford instead of to
the bridge, a mistake that is probably a very good one to have made when
viewed from the stand-point of mud, as my road is at least the shorter
one of the two.
A wild-looking, busby-decked crowd of Khorassani goatherds from a
neighboring village follow behind me across the level mudflats leading to
the stream, vociferously clamoring for me to ride. They shout
persistently: "H-o-i! Sowar shuk; tomasha! tomasha!" even when they see
the difficult task I have of it getting the bicycle through the mud. I
have singled out a big, sturdy goat-herder to assist me across the
streams, of which I learn there are two, a mile or thereabout apart, and
his compatriots are accompanying us to see us cross, as well as being
impelled by prying curiosity to see how many kerans he gets for his
trouble. The first stream is found to be arm-pit deep, with a fairly
strong current. My sturdy Khorassani crosses over first, to try the
bottom, feeling his way with a long-handled spade; he then returns and
carries the bicycle across on his head, afterward carrying me across
astride his shoulders, landing me safely with nothing worse than wet
feet.
A mile of awful saline mud, and stream number two is reached and crossed
in a similar manner--although here I unfortunately cross part way
over fairly sitting on the water. The water and the weather are both
uncomfortably chilly, and my assistant emerges from the second stream
with chattering teeth and goose-pimply flesh. A liberal and well-deserved
present makes him forget personal discomforts, and, fervently kissing my
hand and pressing my palm to his forehead, he tells me there is no more
water ahead, and, recrossing the stream, he wends his way homeward again.
Fortunately the road improves rapidly, developing beyond the Nishapoor
Valley into smooth, upland camel-trails that afford quite excellent
wheeling. The Nishapoor Valley impresses me as about the finest area of
cultivation seen in Persia, except, perhaps, the Tabreez Plain; and
toward Gadamgah the country gets positively beautiful--at least, beautiful
in comparison. Crystal streamlets come purling and gurgling across the
road over pebbly beds; and, looking northward for their source, one finds
that the usually gray and uninteresting foot-hills have changed into
bright, green slopes, on whose cheerful brows are seen an occasional pine
or cedar. Overtopping these green, grassy slopes are dark, rugged rocks,
and higher still the grim white region of--winter. Somewhere behind
these emerald foot-hills, near Gadamgah, are the famous turquoise mines
alluded to in the "Veiled Prophet of Khorassan." The mines are worked at
the present time, but only in a desultory and unenterprising manner.
Favored with good roads, I succeed in reaching Gadamgah before dark,
where, besides a comfortable and commodious caravanserai, and the
pleasure of seeing around a number of fine-spreading cedars, one can
obtain the rare luxury of pine-wood to build a fire.
Immediately upon my arrival a knowing and respectable-looking old
pilgrim, who calls himself a hadji and a dervish from Mazan-deran,
rescues me from the annoying importunities of the people and invites me
to share the accommodation of his menzil. Augmenting his scanty stock of
firewood and obtaining eggs and bread, quite a comfortable evening is
spent in reclining beside the blazing pine-wood fire, which is itself no
trifling luxury in a country of scanty camel-thorn and tezek. Whenever
the prying curiosity of the occupants of neighboring menzils impels them
to visit our quarters, to stand and stare at me, my friend the hadji
waxes indignant, and, waving a stick of firewood threateningly toward
them, he pours forth a torrent of withering and sarcastic remarks. Once,
in his wrath, he hops lightly off the menzil floor, seizes an individual
twice his own size by the kammerbund, jerks him violently forward, bids
him stare until he gets ashamed of staring, and then, turning him round,
shoves him unceremoniously away again, pursuing him as he retreats to his
own quarters with vengeful shouts of "y-a-h!"
To a few eminently respectable travellers, however, the hadji graciously
accords the coveted privilege of squatting around our fire and chatting.
Being himself a person who dearly loves the music of his own voice, he
holds forth at great length on the subject of himself in particular,
dervishes in general, and the Province of Mazanderaii. Like a good many
other people conscious of their own garrulousness, the hadji evidently
suspects his auditors of receiving his statements with a good deal of
allowance; consequently, when impressing upon them the circumstance of
his hailing from Mazanderan--a fact that he seems to think creditable in
some way to himself--he produces from the depths of his capacious
saddlebags several dried fish of a variety for which that province is
celebrated, and exhibits them in confirmation of his statements.
It is genuine wintry weather, and with no bedclothes, save a narrow
horse-blanket borrowed from my impromptu friend, I spend a cold,
uncomfortable night, for a caravanserai menzil is but a mere place of
shelter after all. The hadji rises early and replenishes the fire, and
with his little brass teapot we make and drink a glass of tea together
before starting out.
At daybreak the hadji goes outside to take a preliminary peep at the
weather, and returns with the unwelcome intelligence that it is snowing.
"Better snow than rain," I conclude, as I prepare to start, little
thinking that I am entering upon the toughest day's experience of the
whole journey through Persia.
Before covering three miles, the snow-storm develops into a regular
blizzard; a furious, driving storm that would do credit to Dakota.
Without gloves, and in summer clothes throughout, I quickly find myself
in a most unenviable plight. It is no common snow-storm; every few
minutes a halt has to be made, hands buffeted and ears rubbed to prevent
these members from freezing; yet foot-gear has to be removed and streams
waded in the bitter cold.
The road leads up into a region of broken hills, and the climax of my
discomfort is reached, when the blizzard is raging with ever-increasing
fury, and the cold has already slightly nipped one finger. While
attempting to cross a deep, narrow stream without disrobing, it is my
unhappy fate to drop the bicycle into the water, and furthermore to front
the necessity of instantly plunging in, armpit deep, to its rescue. When
I emerge upon the opposite bank my situation is really quite critical; in
a few moments my garments are frozen stiff; everything I have with me is
wet; my leathern case, containing the small stock of medicines, matches,
writing material, and other small but necessary articles, is full of
water, and, with hands benumbed, I am unable to unstrap it.
My only salvation consists in vigorous exercise, and, conscious of this,
I splurge ahead through the blinding storm and the fast-deepening snow,
fording several other streams, often emerging dripping from the icy water
to struggle through waist-deep snow-drifts that are rapidly accumulating
under the influence of the driving blast and fast-falling snow. Uncertain
of the distance to the next caravanserai, I push determinedly forward in
this condition for several hours, making but slow progress. Everything
must come to an end, however, and twenty miles from Gadamgah the welcome
outlines of a road-side caravanserai become visible through the thickly
falling snow-flakes, and the din of many jangling camel-bells proclaims
it already occupied.
The caravanserai is found so densely crowded with people, horses, camels,
and their loads that it is impossible to at first carry the bicycle
inside. Confusion, and more than confusion, reigns supreme; every menzil
is occupied, and the whole interior space is a confused mass of
charvadars, stoutly vociferating at one another and at the pack-animals
lying down, wandering about, or being unloaded.
Leaving the bicycle outside in the snow, I clamber over the humpy forms
of kneeling camels, through an intricate maze of mules and over
barricades of miscellaneous merchandise, and, making a virtue of dire
necessity, invade the menzil of a well-to-do looking traveller. Here,
waiving all considerations of whether my presence is acceptable or the
reverse, I take a seat beside their fire and forthwith proceed to shed my
saturated foot-gear. Under ordinary conditions this proceeding would be
nothing less than a piece of sublime assurance; but necessity knows no
law, and my case is really very urgent. When I explain to the occupants
of the menzil that this nolens volens invasion of their premises is but a
temporary arrangement, in the flowery language of polite Persian they
tell me that the menzil, the fire, and everything they have is mine.
After the inevitable examination of my map, compass, and sundry effects,
I begin to fancy my presence something of an embarrassment, and
consequently am not a little gratified at hearing the authoritative voice
of my friend the hadji shouting loudly at the charvadars, telling them
that he is a hadji and a Mazanderan dervish, for whom they cannot clear
the way too quickly. Looking round, I see him appear at the caravanserai
entrance with a party of pilgrims, in whose company he has journeyed from
Gadamgah. The combined excellences that enter into the composition of a
person who is both a dervish and an ex-Mecca pilgrim are of great benefit
in securing the respect and consideration of the common herd in Persia;
and as, in addition to this, our hadji commands attention by the peculiar
tone and volume of his voice when delivering his commands, his tall,
angular steed is quickly tied up in a snug and sheltered corner and his
saddle-bags deposited on the floor of a fellow-pilgrim's menzil.
Hearing of my arrival, he straightway seeks me out and invites me to
share the accommodation of his new-found quarters, not forgetting to
explain to the people he finds me with, however, that he is a hadji, a
dervish, and that he hails from Mazanderan. I shouldn't be much surprised
to see him back up the latter assertion by producing a dried fish from
the ample folds of his kammerbund; but these finny witnesses are reserved
to perform their role later in the evening.
As the gloom of night envelopes the interior of the caravanserai, and the
scores of little brushwood fires smoke and glimmer and twinkle fitfully,
the scene appeals to an observant Occidental as being decidedly unique,
and totally unlike anything to be seen outside of Persia. Around each
little fire, from four to a dozen figures are squatting, each group
forming a most social gathering; some are singing, some chatting
pleasantly, some quarrelling and arguing violently; some are shouting
lustily at each other across the whole width of the serai; all are taking
turns at smoking the kalian or sipping tea, or preparing supper.
Occasionally a fiery wheel glows through the darkness, from which fly
myriads of sparks, looking very pretty as it describes rapid circles.
This is a. little wire cage, full of live charcoal, that is being swung
round and round like a sling to enliven the coals for priming the kalian.
In the middle space, crowded with animals and their loads, the horses,
being all stallions, are constantly squealing and fighting; camels, are
grunting dolefully, donkeys are braying and bells clanging, and grooms
and charvadars are shouting and quarrelling. Taken all in all, the
interior of a crowded caravanserai is a decidedly animated place.
The snow-storm subsides during the night, and a clear, frosty morning
breaks upon a wintry landscape, in which nothing is visible but snow. The
hadji announces his intention of "Inshallah Meshed, am roos" (please God,
we will reach Meshed to-day) as he covers up the obtrusive tail of a fish
emerging from one of the saddle-bags and prepares to mount. I give him my
packages to carry, by way of lightening my burden as much as possible for
the struggle through the snow, and promise him a bottle of arrack, upon
reaching Meshed, as a reward for thus assisting me through. Arrack is
forbidden fruit to a hadji above all things else, so that nothing I could
promise him would likely prove more tempting or acceptable, or be better
appreciated!
It proves slavish work trundling, tugging, and carrying the bicycle
through the deep snow along a half-broken trail made by a few horses, and
through deep drifts; but the cold, bracing air is favorable for exertion,
and by ten o'clock we reach Shahriffabad, where a halt is made to prepare
a cup of tea and to give the hadji's horse a feed of barley. At
Shahriffabad we are warned that on the hills between here and Meshed snow
will be found two feet deep, streams belly deep to the hadji's horse will
have to be forded, and, toward Meshed, mud knee-deep. Conscious that the
mud will be "knee-deep" the whole distance, after the disappearance of
the snow, this makes us only the more eager to push on while we may.
The sun has by this time become uncomfortably warm, and the narrow trail
is fast becoming a miry pathway of mud and slush under the trampling feet
of the animals gone ahead, and of villagers' donkeys returning from the
city. Mile after mile is devoted to the unhappy task of trundling the
bicycle ahead, rear wheel aloft, through mud and slush varying from
ankle-deep to worse, occasionally varying the programme by fording a
stream.
Late in the afternoon we arrive at the summit of the hills overlooking
the Meshed Plain, and the hadji points out enthusiastically the golden
dome of Imam Biza's sanctuary; the yellow, glistening goal whose famed
sanctity has attracted hosts of pilgrims from all quarters of Central
Asia for ages past. The hills hereabout are of a rocky character, and
pious pilgrims have gathered into little mounds every loose piece of
rock, it being customary for each pilgrim to find a stone and add it to
one of these piles upon first viewing the bright golden dome of the holy
city from this commanding spot.
Below the rocky paths of this declivity the snow disappears in favor of
slippery mud, and the hadji's wearied charger slips and slides about, to
the imminent danger of its rider's neck; and all the time the slim
Turkoman! steed trembles visibly in terror of the old Mazanderan
dervish's whip and his awful threats. Two miles down the bed of the
stream, crossing and recrossing it a dozen times, often thigh-deep, and
we emerge upon the gently sloping area of the Meshed Plain, with the
yellow beacon-light of Meshed glowing in the mellow light of the evening
sun six miles away.
The late storm has been chiefly rain in the lower altitude of the plain,
and the day's sunshine has partially dried the surface, but leaving it
slippery and treacherous here and there. After leaving the bed of the
stream the hadji becomes anxious about reaching Meshed before dark, and
advises me to mount and put on the speed.
"Inshallah, Meshed yek saat," he says, and so I mount and bid him follow
along behind. By vocal suasion and a liberal application of his cruel,
triple-thonged, raw-hide whip, he urges his well-nigh staggering animal
into a canter, lifting his forefeet clear of the ground seemingly by the
bridle at every jump. Suspicious as to his lank and angular steed's
sure-footedness under the strain, I take the very laudable precaution of
keeping as far from him as possible, not caring to get mixed up in a
catastrophe that seems inevitable every time the horse, goaded by the
stinging stimulus of the whip and the threats, makes another jump. Not
more than a mile of the six is covered when I have ample reason for
congratulating myself on taking this precaution, for the horse stumbles,
and, being too far gone to recover himself, comes down on his nose, and
the "hadji and Mazanderau dervish" is cutting a most ridiculous figure in
the mud. His tall lambskin hat flies off and lands in a pool of muddy
water some distance ahead; the ponderous saddle-bags, which are merely
laid on the saddle, shoot forward athwart the horse's neck, the horse's
nose roots quite a furrow in the road, and the horse's owner picks
himself up and takes a woeful survey of his own figure. It is needless to
say that the survey includes a good deal more real estate than the hadji
cares to claim, even though it be the semi-sacred soil of the Meshed
Plain.
The poor horse is altogether too tired to attempt to recover his legs of
his own inclination; but, regarding him as the author of his ignominious
misadventure, the hadji surveys him with a wrathful eye for a moment,
mutters a few awful imprecations--imported, no doubt, from Mazanderan--and
then attacks him savagely about the head with the whip. In his wrath and
determination to make a lasting impression of each blow given, the hadji
emphasizes each visitation with a very audible grunt; and, to speak
correctly, so does the horse. It goes without saying, however, that
master and animal grunt from widely different motives; although, so far
as the mere audible performance is concerned, one grunt might almost be
an echo of the other.
At length, by adopting a more circumspect pace, we reach the gate of the
holy city about sunset without further mishap. The hadji leads the way
through a bewildering labyrinth of narrow streets that consist of an open
sewage-ditch in the centre, at present full of filth, and a narrow
footway of rough, broken, and mud-bespattered cobble-stones on either
side. Of course we are followed through these fearful thoroughfares by a
surging and vociferous crowd of people such as a Central Asian city alone
can produce; but I can this time happily afford to smile at these usually
irritating accompaniments to my arrival in a populous city, for ten
minutes after entering the gate finds me shaking hands with Mr. Gray, the
genial telegraphist of the Afghan Boundary Commission. With a
well-guarded gate between our cosey quarters and the shouting mob
outside, the evening is spent very pleasantly and quietly, in striking
comparison with what it would have been had no one been here to afford me
a place of refuge.
Meshed is "the jumping off place" of telegraphy; the electric spider
spins his galvanized web no farther in this direction, and the dirge-like
music of civilization's--AEolian harp, that, like the roll of
England's drum, is heard around the world, approaches the barbarous
territory of Afghanistan from two directions, but recoils from entering
that fanatical and conservative domain. It approaches from Persia on the
one side, and from India on the other; but as yet it only approaches. The
drum has already been there; it is only a question of time when the
AEolian harp will follow.
It is with lively recollection of Khorassani March weather and the
experience of the last few days that, after a warm bath, I array myself
in a suit of Mr. Gray's clothing, elevate my slippered feet, "Yenghi
Donia fashion," on a pile of Turcoman! carpets, and, abetted by the
cheering presence of a bottle of Shiraz wine, exchange my recent
experiences on the road for telegraphic scraps of the latest news. How
utterly unsatisfactory and altogether wretched seems even the gilded
palace of a Persian provincial governor--the meaningless compliments, the
salaaming lackeys and empty show of courtesy, when compared with the
cosey quarters, the hearty welcome, the honest ring of an Englishman's
voice, and the genuineness of everything!
Shortly after my arrival, a gentleman with a coal-black complexion, a
retreating forehead, and an overshadowing wealth of lip appears at the
door bearing a tray of sweetmeats. Making a profound salaam, he steps out
of his slipper-like shoes, enters, and places the sweetmeats on the
table, smiling a broad expectant-of-backsheesh smile the while he
explains his mission.
"The Sartiep has sent you his salaams and a present of sweetmeats,
preparatory to calling round himself," explains mine host; "he is a
Persian gentleman, Ali Akbar Khan, at the head of the Meshed
telegraph-service, and has the rank of general or Sartiep." The Sartiep
himself arrives shortly afterward, accompanied by his favorite son, a
budding youth of some eight or ten summers, of whose beauty he feels very
justly proud. The Sartiep's son is one of those remarkably handsome boys
met with occasionally in modern Persia, and which so profusely adorn old
Persian paintings. With soft, girlish features, big, black, lustrous
eyes, and an abundance of long hair, they remind one of the beautiful
youths of Oriental romance; his fond parent takes him about on his visits
and finds much gratification in the admiring remarks bestowed upon the
son.
The Sartiep is an ideal Persian official, courteous and complimentary,
but never forgetful of Ali Akbar Khan; his full, round figure and sensual
Oriental face speak eloquently of mutton pillau and other fattening
dishes galore, sweetmeats, cucumbers, and melons; and deep draughts from
pleasure's intoxicating cup have not failed to leave their indelible
marks. In this particular the Sartiep is but a casually selected sample
of the well-to-do Persian official. Leaving out a few notable exceptions,
this brief description of him suffices to describe them all.
Following in the train of the Sartiep arrive more servants, bearing
dishes of kabobs, herb-seasoned pillau, and various other strange, savory
dishes, which, Mr. Gray explains, are considered great delicacies among
the upper-class Persians and are intended as a great compliment to me.
Although Mohammedans, and particularly Shiite Mohammedans, are forbidden
by their religion to indulge in alcoholic beverages, the average high
official in Persia is anything but a sanctimonious individual, and
partakes with a keen relish of the forbidden fruit in an open-secret
manner. The thin, transparent veil of abstemiousness that the Persian
noble wears in deference to the sanctimonious pretensions of the mollahs
and seyuds and the public eye at large, is cast aside altogether in the
presence of intimate friends, and particularly if that intimate friend is
a Ferenghi. Owing to their association in the telegraph-service, mine
host and the Sartiep are on the most intimate terms. The Sartiep soon
after his arrival intimates, with a humorous twinkle of the eye, that he
feels the need of a little medicine. Mr. Gray, as becomes a good
physician who knows well the constitutional requirements of his patient,
and who knows what to prescribe without even going through the
preliminary act of feeling the pulse, produces a pale-green bottle and a
tumbler and pours out a full dose of its contents for an adult.
The patient swallows it at a gulp, nibbles a piece of sweetmeat, and
strokes his stomach in token of approval.
"What was the medicine you prescribed, Gray?" "High wines," says the
physician, "95 proof alcohol; a bottle that the entomologist of the
Boundary Commission happened to leave here a year ago; it was the only
thing in the house except wine. The patient pronounces it the 'best
arrack' he ever tasted; the firier these fellows can get it the better
they like it."
"Why, it didn't even make him gasp!"
"Gasp--nonsense; you haven't been in Persia as long as I have yet, or you
wouldn't say 'gasp' even at 95% alcohol."
But how polite, how complimentary, these French of Asia are, and how
imaginative and fanciful their language! Not having shaved since leaving
Teheran, after surveying myself in the glass, I feel called upon, in the
interest of fellow-wheelmen elsewhere, to explain to our discerning
visitors that all bicyclers are not distinguished from their fellow men
by a bronzed and stubby phiz and an all-around vagrom appearance.
The Sartiep strokes his beard and stomach, casts a lingering glance at
the above-mentioned green-glass bottle, smiles, and replies: "Having
accomplished so wonderful a journey, you are now prettier with your
rough, unshaven face than you ever were before; you can now survey
yourself in the looking-glass of fame instead of in a common mirror that
reflects all the imperfections of ordinary mortals." Having delivered
himself of this compliment, the Sartiep's eye wanders in the direction of
the 95% alcohol again, and the next minute is again smacking his lips and
complacently stroking his stomach.
In the morning, before I am up, a servant arrives from a Mesh-edi notable
named Hadji Mahdi, bringing salaams from his master, and a letter clothed
in the fine "apparel diplomatique" of the Orient. The letter, although in
reality nothing more than a request to be allowed to come and see the
bicycle, reads in substance as follows: "Salaams from Hadji Mahdi--may he
be your sacrifice!-to Gray Sahib and the illustrious Sahib who has
arrived in Holy Meshed from Teheran, on the wonderful asp-i-awhan, the
fame of whose deeds reaches to the ends of the earth. Bismillah! May your
shadows never grow less! Your sacrifice's brother, Hadji Mollah Hassan,
whose eyes were gladdened by a sight of the asp-i-awhan Sahib at
Shahrood, and who now sends his salaams, telegraphs me--his unworthy
brother--that upon the Sahib's arrival in Meshed I should render him
any assistance he might need. Inshallah, with your permission--may
it not be withheld--your sacrifice will be pleased to call and
gladden his eyes with a sight of Gray Sahib and the illustrious Sahib his
guest."
As might have been expected, the advent of a Ferenghi on so strange a
vehicle as a bicycle, arriving in the sacred city of Imam Eiza's
sanctuary, arouses universal curiosity; and not only the Sartiep and
Hadji Mahdi, but hundreds of big-turbaned Meshedi notables, mollahs, and
seyuds are admitted during the day to enjoy the happy privilege of
feasting their eyes on the latest proof of the Ferenghis' wonderful
marifet,
Upon receipt of the telegram at Shahrood refusing me permission to go
through Turkestan, I telegraphed to Mr. Gray, requesting him to obtain
leave for me to go to the Boundary Commission Camp, and accompany them
back to India, or reach India from the camp alone. Mr. Gray kindly
forwarded my request to the camp, and now urges me to consider myself his
guest until the return courier arrives with the answer. This turns out to
mean a stop-over of seven days, and on the second day immense crowds of
people assemble in the street, shouting for me to come out and ride the
bicycle. The clamor on the streets renders it impossible for them to
transact business in the telegraph office, and several times requests are
sent in begging me to appease them and stop the uproar by riding to and
fro along the street. An outer door separates the compound in which the
house is built from the street, and to prevent the rabble from invading
the premises, and the possibility of unpleasant consequences, the
Governor-General stations a guard of four soldiers at the door. This
precaution works very well so far as the common herd are concerned, but
every hour through the day little knots of priestly men in the flowing
new garments and spotless turbans representing their Noo Roos purchases,
or the lamb's-wool cylinder and semi-European garb of the official,
bribe, coerce, or command the guard to let them in.
These persistent people generally stand in a respectful attitude just
inside the outer gate, and send word in by a servant that a Shahzedah
(relative of the Shah) wishes to see the bicycle. After the first
"Shahzedah" has been treated with courtesy and consideration in deference
to his royal relative at Teheran, fully two-thirds of those who come
after unblushingly proclaim themselves uncles, cousins, or nephews of
"His Majesty, the King of Kings and Ruler of the Universe!" The constant
worry and annoyance of these people compel us to adopt measures of
self-defence, and so, after admitting about a hundred uncles, twice that
number of nephews, and Heaven knows how many cousins, we conclude that
blood-relations of the Shah are altogether too numerous in Meshed to be
of much consequence. Soon after arriving at this conclusion, Mr. Gray's
farrash, an Armenian he brought with him from Ispahan, comes in with a
message that another Shahzedah has succeeded in getting past the guard
and sends in his salaams. "Shahzedah be d----d! Turn him out--put him
outside, and tell the guards to let nobody else in without our
permission!"
A moment later the farrash re-enters with the look of a man scarcely able
to control his risibilities, and says the man and his friends are still
inside the gate.
"Why the devil don't you put them out, as you are told, then?"
"He says he is the Padishah's step-father."
"Well, what if he is the Padishah's step-father? It's nothing to be the
Shah's step-father; the Shah probably has five hundred step-father's, to
say the least--turn him out. No; hold hard; let him stay."
We conclude that a step-father to the king, whether genuine or only a
counterfeit, is at least something of a relief after the swarms of
nephews, cousins, and uncles, and so order him to be shown in He proves
to be a corpulent little man about sixty, who advances up the bricked
walk toward us, making about three extra profound salaams to the rod and
smiling in a curious, apprehensive manner, as though not quite assured of
his reception. About a dozen long-robed mollahs and seyuds follow with
timid hesitancy in his wake. Strange to say, he makes no allusion to his
illustrious step-son, the King of Kings at Teheran; and plainly betrays
embarrassment when Gray mentions the fact of my having appeared before
him on the wheel. We conclude that the Shah's step-father and the little
group of holy men clubbed together and paid the Persian guard about a
keran to let them in, and perhaps another half-keran to the Armenian
farrash for not summarily turning them out. He tries very hard, however,
to make himself agreeable, and when told about the Russians refusing me
the road, exclaims artfully: "I was not an enemy of the Russians before I
heard this, but now I am their worst enemy! Suppose the Sahib's iron
horse was a wheel of fire, what harm would it do their country even
then?"
Our most distinguished caller to-day is Mirza Abbas Khan, C. I. E., a
Kandahari gentleman, who has been the British political agent at Meshed
for many years. He makes a formal call in all the glory of his official
garments, a magnificent Cashmere coat lined with Russian sable and
profusely trimmed with gold braid; a servant leads his gayly caparisoned
horse, and another brings up the rear with a richly mounted kalian.
Appearances count for something among the people of Northeastern Persia,
and Abbas Khan draws a sufficiently large salary to enable him to wear
gorgeous clothes, and thereby dim the lustre of his bitter rival, the
political agent of Russia.
Abbas Khan is perhaps the handsomest man in Meshed, is in the prime of
life, dyes his flowing beard an orthodox red, and posse
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