Volume Ii Part 8 (2/2)
The governor has been very suspicious of us, and thrown all the obstacles he could in our way. He came yesterday, fortunately not till Wilfrid was better and able to receive him, and was evidently indisposed to further our wishes. His manner, though extremely polite, showed that he was determined we should go to Ahwas, not Bebahan. He strongly urged us to give up all notion of taking the Bebahan road; the country was unsafe; no escort short of a thousand men would suffice to get us through, and that number he had not at his disposal; and besides, we should be wanting in respect to the Shahzade if we did not go and present our letter to him; we were really bound to go to Ahwas, where we should find him. As to a letter from the English balioz (consul) at Bussora, no such communication had been received; and he the wakil, knew nothing about us. He could only repeat that he would do nothing for us except forward us to Ahwas.
He positively refused an escort for any other object.
Things were in this position when the wakil left, and we were at our wits' end, when fortunately, a young gentleman called who belongs to the telegraph office, Mirza Ali Mohammed, of s.h.i.+raz, ”captain of telegraphs,”
who talks a little Arabic, and a little French. It then occurred to Wilfrid to telegraph to the Legation at Teheran, requesting that the government there should be asked to order the wakil of Shustar to give us an escort to Bebahan. The captain of telegraphs carried off this message, which he had written and translated into Persian for us, and the money for its transmission; but this morning he returned the money, with news that the telegram could not be sent. The fact is he dared not send it without informing his superior, who declined to let it go. But it has had its effect. The governor has no pretext now for doubting our respectability, for suspicious characters would not want to communicate with the central government at Teheran. So instead of a thousand, we are to have an escort of six men and a sergeant to accompany us to Bebahan.
It has been unwillingly granted, and I shall not be surprised if it should even yet be withdrawn.
_Later_.-There seems to have been a storm somewhere; the air is clear, and we hope for less oppressive weather. But the foretaste of heat we have had, is a warning. We have talked over our plans, and agreed to give up all idea of pus.h.i.+ng on to Bender Abbas, and to be satisfied with reaching Bus.h.i.+re. There can be no difficulty in finding Captain Cameron, for he will be obliged to pa.s.s between Bebahan and the sea, but we must make haste or he will have crossed our line before we can get to the coast. His intention was to keep as near to the coast as possible, so that we ought to meet him near or at Bender Dilam.
Three or four respectable merchants of Shustar have waited upon us this evening, and given us much friendly advice about the dangers of travel in which we do not much believe. They shook their heads when Wilfrid remarked, that surely under the administration of the Shahzade and his excellent wakil, the country must be safe, and a.s.sured us that the wakil was perfectly justified in dissuading us from our undertaking. It would be much safer to go to Ahwas. Another, Hajji Abdallah, had with him a letter in English from an English firm at Bus.h.i.+re, which he begged us to translate. It was far from complimentary, and we had some difficulty in disguising it under a form of Arabic politeness. He, too, was loud in his dissuasion of our journey.
Our visitors shewed no sign of going away, and I believe they would have sat on all through the night talking, had we not dismissed them. Hajji Abdallah's last words were an entreaty to reconsider our decision, and abandon the foolish plan of going to Bebahan. He has once been that way he says, and would not for the world go again; there are not only dangerous wild tribes, but mountain pa.s.ses and impa.s.sable rocks. We listened unmoved, and in fact we had no choice.
[Picture: s.h.a.gran]
CHAPTER V.
”Solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.”
TACITUS.
Illness and misery-A Persian escort-The Shah's Arab subjects-Ram Hormuz and its nightingales-Night marching-Deserted villages-How they collect taxes in Persia-Bebahan.
_Friday_, _April_ 11.-It would be easy to quote unlucky starts on Fridays, and I am afraid this is one. Wilfrid is ill again, a pa.s.sing fatigue we hope, from loading the camels this morning in the hot sun, and riding all day long in it. He is lying down now in the tent and trying to rest, but the flies are intolerable.
Our plan in leaving Shustar was to go with our escort, seven soldiers on foot, armed six with matchlocks and one with a narghileh, to Ram Hormuz, a small town eighty miles on the road to Bebahan, and there get a reinforcement from the Ferraz-bas.h.i.+ or deputy governor of the place for the other eighty miles. This sounded well enough, but already our escort has deserted us, and we are alone.
After delays of all sorts, for till the moment of starting we were still without servants, we got our camels loaded, and about ten o'clock rode out of the palace gate and through the streets of Shustar, and over a stone bridge, which spans the second of the two branches of the river on which the town stands, and into the open country beyond. It was terribly hot, and the whole country is a plague of flies, which buzz about one all day long, and settle on one's head at night.
Our camels have profited by the mallows in the court of the palace to such an extent that they are all fat and frisky, and we had some trouble in loading them. But, at the last moment, we had an unexpected offer of a.s.sistance. A young Arab, dressed in a green calico jibbeh, suddenly appeared upon the scene, and volunteered his services. He had a pleasant face, so that we were taken with him at once. He told us that he was a native of some village on the Tigris near Bagdad, and that he had been impressed by the Turks for their navy, in which he had served three years, that he had then managed to desert while in port at Bussorah, and had fled across the border to Mohamrah. He had since earned his bread by working as horse-keeper for one of the Bawiyeh sheykhs, and later, tiring of that, in service with different Persians at Shustar. His idea now, was to get down to the sea once more, and he begged us to take him with us to Bus.h.i.+re. By accident Hajji Mohammed knew something of some of his relations at Bagdad, and as such a person was exactly what we most wanted, we accepted him at once, on his own terms. This young fellow's coming has been an advantage to us in more ways than one, for it had the immediate effect of inducing another of the crowd who were witnessing our departure to volunteer, and a little red-haired Persian in blue frock and trowsers, came forward to enlist in our service. Thus we are no longer wholly dependent on our old cava.s.s and on ourselves.
As soon as we were outside the town, our sergeant and the six soldiers began to give themselves airs of military importance, advancing in front of us in skirmis.h.i.+ng order, and enjoining us to keep close together, although the country had a quite peaceable appearance, the road much frequented by country people on donkeys, unarmed and peaceable folks.
The track led through undulating ground chiefly barren, here and there a patch of cultivation, often between high banks. Our brave defenders here shewed their zeal by running up to the tops of the steepest and highest of these banks, firing off their guns at random, generally in the air, but one of the shots. .h.i.t a lizard sitting in its hole. Their energy, however, cooled as the heat increased; and towards noon, they were satisfied to trudge along with only an occasional diversion to look out for enemies. By a quarter to one o'clock, they all seemed tired, and we too were glad to halt for three quarters of an hour, under a large shady canora tree, in the midst of a field of oats. Here we ate our luncheon, while the animals fed on the oats. Wilfrid complained a little of the sun, but it was not till we had gone on again for a couple of hours that he acknowledged he felt really ill. We were just turning off the track to the north, to go to the tents of a certain Ha.s.san Khan, known to the soldiers, when he said he could have gone no further. The tents were not a mile from the road, but getting there was almost too much for him. We found them set in a circular enclosure, fenced in by a hedge of branches, like a new made Suss.e.x fence, and evidently intended to last longer than a true Bedouin camp ever does. Here there are about a dozen small tents, half hair, half matting. Outside the enclosure, a few mares and foals grazing, among them one rather nice filly, Wadneh Hursan they say, and animals of all sorts, cows, sheep, and goats have been brought inside the hedge for the night.
Wilfrid is extremely tired. The rest seems to have done him no good. He complains of his head and of pains all over. I hope fatigue and the heat are sufficient to account for his feeling ill. I dread a return of the attack he had at Shustar. I wish we had not left the town. This is a forlorn spot to be ill in, and though at Shustar we should be no better off, as far as concerns getting out of the country, there would be a few more comforts, and a chance of sending for help to Bussora. If he gets worse we shall be in an almost hopeless position. Every place seems frightfully far off the moment there is a difficulty about moving; to get back to Shustar would be almost as impracticable as to go on to Ram Hormuz. Seven hours' travelling seems now an impa.s.sable gulf. I have arranged a sort of mosquito net for Wilfrid against the flies, but it only keeps them out for a time, and then a few manage to get inside it, and it has all to be rearranged. But now it is nearly sundown, and the flies will go to sleep at dark; and if the night is cool he may get some sleep.
Everybody here is fortunately kind. Ha.s.san Khan, the chief, is away at Shustar, but his brother Kambar Aga received us well. He has good manners, speaks Arabic pretty fairly, and has been telling me about his tribe, a section of the Bawiyeh of Ajjem, as distinguished from the Bawiyeh of the Ottoman dominions. The people and their chief seem to be very poor. Kambar professes himself ready to accompany us to-morrow to another camp not far off, and on our line of march, that of Hajji Salman, an Arabic-speaking tribe; this is fortunate, as our escort has deserted.
They probably never meant to come further than this, but however that may be, they have in fact abandoned us and gone home to Shustar. In the middle of the day, while we were sitting under the canora tree, they demanded money, and Hajji Mohammed foolishly, without asking us, gave them as much as they ought to have had for the whole journey to Ram Hormuz, and as a consequence, having secured their pay, and with no further motive for taking trouble they departed. Their company is no loss, they were disagreeable and tiresome, but they were of value as a mark of government protection, and in that respect it is unfortunate that they have left us.
Escort or no escort I care not, if only Wilfrid would get better, and he seems no better.
_Sat.u.r.day evening_, _April_ 12.-Wilfrid alarmingly ill all night. He got rapidly worse, and then seemed unconscious of all around; it seemed hopeless, but now he has rallied, and I think the worst is over. Still I have made up my mind not to look beyond the necessity of the moment, and indeed these twenty-four hours blot out past and future. I don't know why I write a journal. He cannot sit up yet, though he says he shall be able to travel to-night. I don't know what to think, but the wish to move is something gained; a short time ago he could hardly speak, and if he really has turned the corner, a few hours may make a great difference.
He now says that by travelling at night only, he shall be able to go on.
Ghada, our new Arab, has behaved very well. I hardly know what I should have done without him to keep the fire up all night, and help to make medicines and beef-tea. In the evening and night I tried everything I could think of out of our small stock of medicines, and in vain. The sun rose and blazed fiercely, and the flies swarmed as before. But in the afternoon the illness took another turn, and now, at any rate, the danger seems to be past.
To please Wilfrid, though I doubt his being able to travel, I have packed up everything and got the tents down, and each separate load put ready; for to carry out the plan of night-travelling, we must load after dark, that is, by the light of a very small moon, when it rises about one o'clock. We are then to be off, Wilfrid to ride his delul, and we are to get as far as we can; I have got cold tea and beef-tea in bottles, to be accessible at any moment. He has remained lying down on his rugs and pillow, the only things not yet packed, which, when the time comes, will be put on his delul.
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