features of interest, the great highway from Isfahan to Tihran, a road
of dreary width; where it is a made road running usually perfectly
straight, with a bank and a ditch on each side. The thaw is now
complete, and travelling consists of an attempt to get on by the road
till it becomes an abyss which threatens to prove bottomless, then
there is a plunge and a struggle to the top of the bank, or over the
bank to the trodden waste, but any move can be only temporary, the
all-powerful mire regulates the march. The snow is nothing to the mud.
Frequently carcasses of camels, mules, and asses, which have lain down
to die under their loads, were passed, then caravans with most of the
beasts entangled in the miry clay, unable to rise till they were
unloaded by men up to their knees in the quagmire, and, worst of all,
mules loaded with the dead, so loosely tied up in planks that in some
cases when the mule flounders and falls, the miserable relics of
humanity tumble out upon the swamp; and these scenes of falling,
struggling, and even perishing animals are repeated continually along
the level parts of this scarcely passable highroad.
Our loads, owing to bad tackle, were always coming off, the groom's
mule fell badly, the packs came off another, and half an hour was
spent in catching the animal, then I was thrown from my horse into
soft mud.
Cultivation ceases a short distance from Kum, giving place to a brown
waste, with patches of saline efflorescence upon it, on which high
hills covered partially with snow send down low spurs of brown mud.
The water nearly everywhere is brackish, and only just drinkable.
After crossing a rapid muddy river, nearly dry in summer, by a much
decayed bridge of seven or eight low arches, we reached _terra firma_,
and a long gradual ascent and a series of gallops brought us to the
large caravanserai of Shashgird, an immense place with imposing
pretensions which are fully realised within. In the outer court camels
were lying in rows. A fine tiled archway leads to an immense
quadrangle, with a fine stone _abambar_ or covered receptacle for
water in the middle. All round the quadrangle are arched recesses or
mangers, each with a room at the back, to the number of eighty. At two
of the corners there are enclosed courtyards with fountains, several
superior rooms with beds (much to be avoided), chairs, mirrors, and
tables fairly clean--somewhat dreary luxury, but fortunately at this
season free from vermin. That caravanserai can accommodate 1000 men in
rooms, and 1500 mules.
To-day's long march, which, however, has had more road suitable for
galloping, has been over wild, weird, desolate, God-forsaken country,
interesting from its desolation and its great wastes, forming part of
the Kavir or Great Salt Desert of Persia, absolutely solitary, with
scarcely a hamlet--miles of the great highway of Persia without a
living creature, no house, no bush, nothing. Later, there were some
vultures feasting on a dead camel, and a mule-load of two bodies down
in the mud.
Some miles from Shashgird, far from the road, there is a large salt
lake over which some stationary mists were brooding. Beyond this an
ascent among snow clouds along some trenched land where a few vines
and saplings have been planted leads to a caravanserai built for the
accommodation of state officials on their journeys, where in falling
snow we vindicated our origin in the triumphant West by taking lunch
on a windy verandah outside rather than in the forlorn dampness of the
inside, and brought a look of surprise even over the impassive face of
the _seraidar_.
When we left the snow was falling in large wet flakes, and the snow
clouds were drifting wildly among the peaks of a range which we
skirted for a few miles and then crossed at a considerable height
among wonderful volcanic formations, mounds of scoriae, and outcrops of
volcanic rock, hills of all shapes fantastically tumbled about,
chiefly black, looking as if their fires had only just died out,
streaked and splotched with brilliant ash--orange, carmine, and
green--a remarkable volcanic scene, backed by higher hills looking
ghastly in the snow.
After passing over an absolutely solitary region of camel-brown plains
and slopes at a gallop, M---- a little in front always, and Abbas
Khan, the wildest figure imaginable, always half a length behind, the
_thud_ of the thundering hoofs mingling with the screech of the
cutting north wind which, coming over the snowy Elburz range, benumbed
every joint, on the slope of a black volcanic hill we came upon the
lofty towers and gaudy tiled front of this great caravanserai,
imposing at a distance in the solitude and snow clouds, but shabby on
a nearer view, and tending to disintegrate from the presence of
saltpetre in the bricks and mortar.
There are successions of terraces and tanks of water with ducks and
geese upon them, and buildings round the topmost terrace intended to
be imposing. The _seraidar_ is expecting the Amin-es-Sultan (the Prime
Minister) and his train, who will occupy rather a fine though tawdry
"suite of apartments"; but though they were at our service, I prefer
the comparative cosiness of a small, dark, damp room, though with a
very smoky chimney, as I find to my cost.
_British Legation, Tihran, Feb. 26._--The night was very cold, and the
reveille specially unwelcome in the morning. The people were more than
usually vague about the length of the march, some giving the distance
at twenty-five miles, and others making it as high as thirty-eight. As
we did a good deal of galloping and yet took more than seven hours, I
suppose it may be about twenty-eight. Fortunately we could desert the
caravan, as the caravanserais are furnished and supply tea and bread.
The baggage mules took ten hours for the march.
The day was dry and sunny, and the scenery, if such a tract of
hideousness can be called scenery, was at its best. Its one charm lies
in the solitude and freedom of a vast unpeopled waste.
The "made road" degenerates for the most part into a track "made"
truly, but rather by the passage of thousands of animals during a long
course of ages than by men's hands. This track winds among low ranges
of sand and mud hills, through the "Pass of the Angel of Death,"
crosses salt and muddy streams, gravelly stretches, and quagmires of
mud and tenacious clay, passing through a country on the whole
inconceivably hideous, unfinished, frothy, and saturated with
salt--the great brown desert which extends from Tihran to Quetta in
Beloochistan, a distance of 2000 miles.
On a sunny slope we met the Prime Minister with a considerable train
of horsemen. He stopped and spoke with extreme courtesy, through an
interpreter, for, unlike most Persians of the higher class, he does
not speak French. He said we had been for some time expected at
Tihran, and that great fears were entertained for our safety, which we
had heard at Kum. He is a pleasant-looking man with a rather European
expression, not more than thirty-two or thirty-three, and in spite of
intrigues and detractors has managed to keep his hazardous position
for some years. His mother was lately buried at Kum, and he was going
thither on pilgrimage. After the usual compliments he bowed his
farewells, and the gay procession with its brilliant trappings and
prancing horses flashed by. The social standing of a Persian is
evidenced by the size of his retinue, and the first of the Shah's
subjects must have been attended by fully forty well-mounted men,
besides a number of servants who were riding with his baggage animals.
Shortly after passing him a turn among the hills brought the
revelation through snow clouds of the magnificent snow-covered chain
of the Elburz mountains, with the huge cone of Demavend, their
monarch, 18,600 feet[23] in height, towering high above them, gleaming
sunlit above the lower cloud-masses. Swampy water-courses, a fordable
river crossed by a broad bridge of five arches, more low hills, more
rolling desert, then a plain of mud irrigated for cultivation,
difficult ground for the horses, the ruins of a deserted village
important enough to have possessed two _imamzadas_, and then we
reached the Husseinabad, which has very good guest-rooms, with mirrors
on the walls.
This caravanserai is only one march from Tihran, and it seemed as if
all difficulties were over. Abbas Khan and the sick orderly were sent
on early, with a baggage mule loaded with evening dress and other
necessities of civilisation; the caravan was to follow at leisure, and
M---- and I started at ten, without attendants, expecting to reach
Tihran early in the afternoon.
It is six days since that terrible ride of ten hours and a half, and
my bones ache as I recall it. I never wish to mount a horse again. It
had been a very cold night, and for some time after we started it was
doubtful whether snow or rain would gain the day, but after an hour of
wet snow it decided on rain, and there was a steady downpour all day.
The Elburz range, which the day before had looked so magnificent when
fifty miles off, was blotted out. This was a great disappointment.
An ascent of low, blackish volcanic hills is made by a broad road of
gray gravel, which a torrent has at some time frequented. Thorns and
thistles grow there, and skeletons of animals abound. Everything is
grim and gray. From these hills we descended into the Kavir, a rolling
expanse of friable soil, stoneless, strongly impregnated with salt,
but only needing sufficient water to wash the salt out of it and to
irrigate it to become as prolific as it is now barren.
It is now a sea of mud crossed by a broad road indicated by dykes,
that never-to-be-forgotten mud growing deeper as the day wore on. Hour
after hour we plunged through it, sometimes trying the road, and on
finding it impassable scrambling through the ditches and over the
dykes to the plain, which after offering firmer foothold for a time
became such a "slough of despond" that we had to scramble back to the
road, and so on, hour after hour, meeting nothing but one ghastly
caravan of corpses, and wretched asses falling in the mud.
At mid-day, scrambling up a gravel hill with a little wormwood upon
it, and turning my back to the heavy rain, I ate a lunch of dates and
ginger, insufficient sustenance for such fatigue. On again!--the rain
pouring, the mud deepening, my spine in severe pain. We turned off to
a caravanserai, mostly a heap of ruins, the roofs having given way
under the weight of the snow, and there I sought some relief from pain
by lying down for the short thirty minutes which could be spared in
the _seraidar's_ damp room. It was then growing late in the afternoon,
all landmarks had disappeared in a brooding mist, there were no
habitations, and no human beings of whom to ask the way.
The pain returned severely as soon as I mounted, and increased till it
became hardly bearable. Ceaseless mud, ceaseless heavy rain, a plain
of mud, no refuge from mud and water, attempts to gallop were made
with the risk of the horses falling into holes and even _kanaats_.
M---- rode in front. Not a word was spoken. A gleaming dome, with
minarets and wood, appeared below the Shimran hills. Unluckily, where
two roads met one looked impassable and we took the other, which,
though it eventually took us to Tihran, was a _detour_ of some miles.
In the evening, when I was hoping that Tihran was at hand, we reached
the town of Shah Abdul Azim, built among the ruins of an ancient city,
either Rhages or Rhei. The gilded dome is the shrine of Abdul Azim,
and is a great place of pilgrimage of the picnic order from Tihran.
The one railroad of Persia runs from the capital to this town. As we
floundered in darkness along wide roads planted with trees, there was
the incongruity of a railway whistle, and with deep breathing and much
glare an engine with some carriages passed near the road, taking away
with its harsh Western noises that glorious freedom of the desert
which outweighs all the hardship even of a winter journey.
It was several miles from thence to the gate of Tihran. It was nearly
pitch dark when we got out of Abdul Azim and the rain still fell
heavily. In that thick rainy darkness no houses were visible, even if
they exist, there were no passengers on foot or on horseback, it was a
"darkness which might be felt."
There was a causeway which gave foothold below the mud, but it was
full of holes and broken culverts, deep in slime, and seemed to have
water on each side not particular in keeping within bounds. It was
necessary to get on, lest the city gates should be shut, and by
lifting and spurring the jaded horses they were induced to trot and
canter along that road of pitfalls. I have had many a severe ride in
travelling, but never anything equal to that last two hours. The
severe pain and want of food made me so faint that I was obliged to
hold on to the saddle. I kept my tired horse up, but each flounder I
thought would be his last. There was no guidance but an occasional
flash from the hoofs of the horse in front, and the word "spur"
ringing through the darkness.
After an hour of riding in this desperate fashion we got into water,
and among such dangerous holes that from that point we were obliged to
walk our horses, who though they were half dead still feebly responded
to bit and spur. We reached the dimly-lighted city gate just as half
of it was shut, and found Abbas Khan waiting there. The caravan with
the other sick men never reached Tihran till late the next morning.
At the gate we learned that it was two miles farther to the British
Legation, and that there was no way for me to get there but on
horseback. One lives through a good deal, but I all but succumbed to
the pain and faintness. Inside the gate there was an open sea of
liquid mud, across which, for a time, certain lights shed their
broken reflections. There was a railway shriek, and then the
appearance of a station with shunting operations vaguely seen in a
vague glare.
Then a tramway track buried under several inches of slush came down a
slope, and crowded tramway cars with great single lamps came down the
narrow road on horses too tired to be frightened, and almost too tired
to get out of the way. Then came a street of mean houses and meaner
shops lighted with kerosene lamps, a region like the slums of a new
American city, with _cafes_ and saloons, barbers' shops, and European
enormities such as gazogenes and effervescing waters in several
windows. Later, there were frequent foot passengers preceded by
servants carrying huge waxed cambric lanterns of a Chinese shape, then
a square with barracks and artillery, a causewayed road dimly lit,
then darkness and heavier rain and worse mud, through which the
strange spectacle of a carriage and pair incongruously flashed.
By that time even the courage and stamina of an Arab horse could
hardly keep mine on his legs, and with a swimming head and dazed brain
I could hardly guide him, as I had done from the gate chiefly by the
wan gleam of Abbas Khan's pale horse; and expecting to fall off every
minute, I responded more and more feebly and dubiously to the question
frequently repeated out of the darkness, "Are you surviving?"
Just as endurance was on the point of giving way, we turned from the
road through a large gateway into the extensive grounds which surround
the British Legation, a large building forming three sides of a
quadrangle, with a fine stone staircase leading up to the central
door. Every window was lighted, light streamed from the open door,
splashed carriages were dashing up and setting down people in evening
dress, there were crowds of servants about, and it flashed on my
dazed senses that it must be after eight, and that there was a dinner
party!
Arriving from the mud of the Kavir and the slush of the streets, after
riding ten hours in ceaseless rain on a worn-out horse; caked with mud
from head to foot, dripping, exhausted, nearly blind from fatigue,
fresh from mud hovels and the congenial barbarism of the desert, and
with the rags and travel-stains of a winter journey of forty-six days
upon me, light and festivity were overwhelming.
Alighting at a side door, scarcely able to stand, I sat down in a long
corridor, and heard from an English steward that "dinner is waiting."
His voice sounded very far off, and the once familiar announcement
came like a memory out of the remote past. Presently a gentleman
appeared in evening dress, wearing a star, which conveyed to my
fast-failing senses that it was Sir H. Drummond Wolff. It was true
that there was a large dinner party, and among the guests the Minister
with thoughtful kindness had invited all to whom I had letters of
introduction. But it was no longer possible to make any effort, and I
was taken up to a room in which the comforts of English civilisation
at first made no impression upon me, and removing only the mackintosh
cloak, weighted with mud, which had served me so well, I lay down on the
hearthrug before a great coal fire till four o'clock the next morning.
And "so the tale ended," and the winter journey with its tremendous
hardships and unbounded mercies was safely accomplished.[24]
I. L. B.
FOOTNOTES:
[23] The altitude of Demavend is variously stated.
[24] I remained for three weeks as Sir H. Drummond Wolff's guest at
the British Legation, receiving from him that courtesy and considerate
kindness which all who have been under his roof delight to recall. I
saw much of what is worth seeing in Tihran, including the Shah and
several of the Persian statesmen, and left the Legation with every
help that could be given for a long and difficult journey into the
mountains of Luristan.
NOTES ON TIHRAN[25]
It is a matter of individual taste, but few cities in the East
interest me in which national characteristics in architecture,
costume, customs, and ways generally are either being obliterated or
are undergoing a partial remodelling on Western lines. An Eastern city
pure and simple, such as Canton, Niigata, or Baghdad, even with
certain drawbacks, forms a harmonious whole gratifying to the eye and
to a certain sense of fitness; while Cairo, Tokio, Lahore, and I will
now add Tihran, produce the effect of a series of concussions.
Tihran--set down on a plain, a scorched desert, the sublimity of which
is interfered with by _kanaats_ or underground watercourses with their
gravel mounds and ruinous shafts--has few elements of beauty or
grandeur in its situation, even though "the triumphant barbarism of
the desert" sweeps up to its gates, and the scored and channelled
Shimran range, backed by the magnificent peak, or rather cone, of
Demavend, runs to the north-east of the city within only ten miles of
its walls.
The winter with its snow and slush disappeared abruptly two days after
I reached Tihran, and as abruptly came the spring--a too transient
enjoyment--and in a few days to brownness and barrenness succeeded a
tender mist of green over the trees in the watered gardens, rapidly
thickening into dark leafage in which the _bulbul_ sang, and nature
helped by art spread a carpet of violets and irises over the brown
earth. But all of verdure and greenery that there is lies within the
city walls. Outside is the unconquerable desert, rolling in endless
shades of buff and brown up to the Elburz range, and elsewhere to the
far horizon.
Situated in the most depressed part of an uninteresting waste in Lat.
35 deg. 40' N. and Long. 51 deg. 25' E., and at an altitude of 3800 feet, the
climate is one of extremes, the summer extreme being the most severe.
For some weeks the heat is nearly insupportable, and the Legations,
and all of the four hundred Europeans who are not bound to the city by
a fate which they execrate, betake themselves to "yailaks," or summer
quarters on the slopes of the adjacent mountains.
Entering Tihran in the darkness, it was not till I saw it coming back
from Gulahek, the "yailak" of the British Legation, when the mud was
drying up and the willows were in their first young green, that I
formed any definite idea of its aspect, which is undeniably mean, and
presents no evidences of antiquity; indeed, it has no right to present
any, for as a capital it only came into existence a century ago, with
the first king of the present Kajar dynasty. The walls are said to be
eleven miles in circuit, and give the impression of being much too
large, so many are the vacant spaces within them. They consist chiefly
of a broad ditch, and a high sloping rampart without guns. Twelve
well-built domed gateways give access to the city. These are decorated
with glazed tiles of bright colours and somewhat gaudy patterns and
designs, representing genii, lions, and combats of mythical heroes.
Above the wall are seen tree-tops, some tile-covered minarets, the
domes of two mosques, and the iron ribs of a roofless theatre in the
Shah's garden, in which under a temporary awning the _Tazieh_ or
Passion Play (elsewhere referred to) is acted once a year in presence
of the Shah and several thousand spectators.
Entering by a gateway over which is depicted a scene in the life of
Rustem, the Achilles of Persia, or by the Sheikh Abdul Azim gate,
where the custom-house is established and through which all caravans
of goods must reach Tihran, the magnitude of the untidy vacant spaces,
and the shabby mud hovels which fringe them, create an unfavourable
impression. Then there are the inevitable ruinousness, the alleys with
broken gutters in the centre, the pools of slime or the heaps of dust
according to the weather, and the general shabbiness of blank walls of
sun-dried bricks which give one the impression, I believe an unjust
one, of decay and retrogression. I never went through those mean
outskirts of Tihran which are within the city walls without being
reminded of a man in shabby clothes preposterously too big for him.
The population is variously estimated at from 60,000 to 160,000 souls.
It varies considerably with the presence or absence of the Court. The
streets and bazars are usually well filled with people, and I did not
see many beggars or evidences of extreme poverty, even in the Jewish
quarter. On the whole it impressed me as a bustling place, but the
bustle is not picturesque. It is framed in mean surroundings, and
there is little variety in costume, and much sober if not sad
colouring.
In "old" Tihran the alleys are crooked, dirty, and narrow, and the
bazars chiefly frequented by the poor are very mean and untidy; but
the better bazars, whether built as some are, round small domed open
spaces, or in alleys roofed with low brick domes, are decidedly
handsome, and are light, wide, clean, and in every way adapted for the
purposes of buying and selling. European women, even though
unattended, can walk through them quite freely without being mobbed or
stared at.
The best bazars are piled with foreign merchandise, to the _apparent_
exclusion of native goods, which, if they are of the better quality,
must be searched for in out-of-the-way corners. Indeed, if people want
fine carpets, _curios_, rich embroideries, inlaid arms, and Kerman
stuffs, they must resort to the itinerant dealers, who gauge the
tastes and purchasing powers of every European resident and visitor,
and who may be seen at all hours gliding in a sort of surreptitious
fashion round the Legation compounds, conveying their beautiful
temptations on donkeys' backs.
It is chiefly in the fine lofty saddlery bazar and some small bazars
that native manufactures are _en evidence_. All travelling is on
horseback, and the Persian, though sober in the colours of his costly
clothing, loves crimson and gold in leather and cloth, embroidered
housings and headstalls, and gorgeous saddle-covers for his horse. The
usual saddle is of plain wood, very high before and behind, and
without stuffing. A thick soft _namad_ or piece of felt covers the
horse's back, and over this are placed two or more saddle-cloths
covered with a very showy and often highly ornamental cover, with
tasselled ends, embroidered in gold and silks and occasionally with
real gems. The saddle itself is smoothly covered with a soft
ornamental cover made to fit it, and the crupper, breastplate, and
headstall are frequently of crimson leather embroidered in gold, or
stitched ingeniously with turquoise beads.