Part 6 (1/2)

”Oh, sir, then it would be going fro in one place, and thy uncle in the other”

”Then go to the king and make complaint”

”This would not help ain thy brother is prio to h----,” thundered at hi that thy sainted father, the pious Hadji, is dead,” retorted the witty Persian

The governor thereupon burst out laughing, and said: ”Since thou findest it so hard to be reconciled to my relatives, I will pay thy debts for thee”

I occupied in Isfahan the saies He found here ample opportunity to practise his art, and exhibited his perfor the day, at the bazaar and in the courtyards of the ed in thela ”the fruitful river in the eye” and shed a shower of veritable tears But on returning hoedy deserted hi hust people of every kind and ratherrespect everywhere He would at first sing a sacred song or two and then pass over to worldly ones; and although he wore a green turban in token of his descent from the family of the Prophet, he drank like a trooper

The inhabitants of Isfahan are very proud of their city; they are rather conceited, and think the and the royal family, with their Turkish soldiery, are dreaded and hated by them They look upon the authority of I Fabulous accounts are circulated about the immense wealth of that chief priest, who keeps a thousand _lutis_ (strolling players) in his hire These lutis spread ast the people wonderful accounts of the chief priest's miraculous power, and it is they who scatter broadcast the vilest slanders concerning the royal fa power over everybody except the chief priest of Isfahan, the relations between him and Imam Djuma were never of the friendliest kind

I passed teeks in Isfahan and had an excellent opportunity to see the noteworthy sights and to observe all the classes of society in the town We eht us to this place concerning the continuation of our journey, and almost the entire company met at the appointed time at a caravansary outside the town We wasted threeshort excursions in the neighbourhood Of the res I saill mention only the movable towers of _Munare Djoe of _Khaledan_, about an hour's distance froh and stand about twenty paces apart I stepped withhold of, and shaking with all his ht, one of the towers, I became sensible of a motion like that caused by an earthquake not only in the other tower, but in the entire front of the building This re, the secret of whose architecture has descended into the grave with its builder, has been considerably daed by the frequent exhibition of its movableness The Persians attribute thebeneath it

We left Isfahan at last, and proceeded on our way in the direction of thean eardens and ruins Our caravan, which consisted of three divisions, two having joined us for our journey to shi+raz, now nuers, and even on this much-travelled road ere looked upon as a caravan of considerable size The co of the three caravans into one was caused by the fear of certain nost theand plundering smaller caravans either from avarice or as a pastime Only a few days had passed since a shly treated by the such stories Many a time one is told, ”At this place ten men were killed yesterday,” ”The day before, at another place, a merchant was set upon and robbed;” but the traveller need not take fright at these accounts, for he may be sure that the events related either happened ten years ago, or did not occur at all Indeed our party of travellers had no need of the frightful stories hich they had been regaling each other on the eve of their departure to e ooze out, for to a man they were remarkably deficient in that valuable article, the virtue of courage Since the Persian in general is looked upon in all Asia as a most cowardly creature, who is scared to death by his own shadow, onechiefly of pilgri to see theht, although ere only at a distance of two hours fro in whispers as if a single loudly spoken word htful cala hich he had loaded four of his ation of a devoutbad luck to the entire company of the truly faithful It was in vain the poor ly insisted that he had never tasted a drop of wine all his life, and that he was conveying this abhorred beverage to Bois would drink it; in vain he swore by all the saints of the calendar he did not even know if the ere red or white; he had to leave the caravan and keep a distance of a hundred feet between himself and it

Next day we arrived at _kuerous place about which we had heard so htful stories About an hour before our departure ht that this was a fitting moment to collect about hiies, in order, as he said, to invoke the prophet's protection on our perilous journey, but in reality that a few coins ht wander from the pockets of the deeply affected faithful into his own The rawzekhan's proposition was immediately acquiesced in The Persian is prepared at any moment to lament the death of his favourite prophet, particularly of the htest trouble, though the moment before he may have been in theto the singer's elegy The songster frodad was soon surrounded by the whole company, and he hardly ca, when there arose such a wailing and weeping as if the nearest relation of every one of the listeners were lying stark dead before him The performer usually seizes this moment to rise, tear away his dress fro his fists: ”O ye true believers, behold thus I shall strike my breast with penitence and pity for poor Hussein, yes, for Hussein!” His last words are repeated by all theaway at stalwart chests, frequently keeping in the pounding such excellent ti troop of horsemen A pious fellow happened to observe that, with Sunnite perverseness, I did not thu attentively listened to the sound produced by h, he furiously exclai; he does not consider our Hussein worthy of more powerful strokes on his breast Just wait; I shall show him how to strike his breast” With this he approached me with his uplifted fist of iron If he had struck me I should, probably, have had reason to remember it all my life; but thanks to the kind offices of my friends, particularly the Seid, the matter proceeded no further A friend ofhih he do not strike his breast in this life, Azrail (the Angel of Death) will beat it all the more for hied to be dangerous without having come to harm, and the caravan, now considerably relieved, proceeded on their journey towards _Yezdekhast_ The country around us became more and more flat; the desert, in the centre of which the celebrated city of Yezd is situated, extending to the east The sun had already risen high e passed through the arid grass-covered plain, its level stretch being interrupted only here and there by gently undulating ground I had been infora steadily at a dark dot in the distance, I soon discovered it to be a whole herd of these timid creatures of the desert, who scent the approach of a caravan from afar and fly from them with the swiftness of a bird I had soazelles at a distance, the colour of their fur reserass of the plain; and when azelles, the gazelles!), I could see nothing, until uish their white hind parts frorass Just as with us the hare is supposed to be the eazelle is looked upon in the East as the hare's counterpart in this particular A herd of above a hundred gazelles is seized with a panic at the sudden rising of a bird, or the azelle, it throws itself upon its back with its legs up and looks at one with such a pitiful expression out of its lustrousfor the poor duazelles, I suddenly caught sight of ain the south-east These deceptive illusions of the air are by no h they do not equal in grandeur sireat desert of Turkestan, yet, even in that fainter forination of the traveller As I was gazing upon the floating fors, it seehted arian Alfold (Lowland)

Then, too, leaning against the tall pole of a well, I was gazing at the far-stretching plain which, panting and thirsting, was ”dreae recalled my own beautiful country, so far off, and when suddenly a rising cloud of dust concealed the fairy spectacle from my view, it seemed to scatter ins beyond Yezdekhast, and its inhabitants differ from the Persians as much, I should say, as the Neapolitans do from the inhabitants of Northern Italy; their cos are reater portion of the inhabitants h their country _Shulghistan_, our first station in Fars, is noted for the tomb of a saint, supposed to be the son of Imao, it had been attacked by ene the sanctuary A blind beggar at the gate of the toious band, who desired to end his days repenting I was sufficiently interested to wish to hear the account froar himself, and questioned him about this occurrence; but he admitted to me that his blindness proceeded from other causes, and that he had never been connected with a band of robbers Yet he willingly passed hiet his share of the alhistan ere joined on our way by a horseuished appearance, followed by a number of servants, whose place of destination was the sa closely theto make up histhe journey After a while he approached me with the friendliest salutation I soon found out that he was going to visit the governor of Fars, by orders of the Shah, in order to collect last year's arrears, a the remittance of the sum, but it was never sent

The Khan was now ordered by the Shah to send the unreovernor to prison for a few days; and should this punishment fail to produce the desired effect to withdraw for a couple of days his _kallian_ (water-pipe) fro debts is by no means rare in Persia The Khan was a person of refinement and culture; he was very tolerant, and to hi He saw in me the most travelled and experienced man in the caravan, and had therefore joined lad, as it had procured for reeable fellow-traveller When we arrived at our next station, Abade, we took a lodging together, and also took our ether

Froht's rims, ere either bound for Kerbela, in the west, or Meshed, in the east In Persia the nu and autumn, amounts to hundreds of thousands The poorest Persian will spend all his savings, nay, even starve, in order to take part in such a pilgrihbourhood of _Bender Bushi+r_, and was going to Kerbela The journey there takes sixty days, and the journey back as hways of Persia is chiefly dependent upon these pious travellers It is no rare thing to see ahty years old If two such caravans rims on their way to the holy places, ”Pray for e be blessed” Both parties are deeply enerally embrace each other upon these occasions; indeed the , far off, in the stillness of the night, the _Illahie_ (hyriard to our next station Many notable ruins of ancient times may be seen in _Maderi Sulei Solost thee of Maderi Suleiada_, as the one where the toentle slope of the low range of hted to discover on the right of our road several statues gilded by the first rays of the rising sun The slow pace of the caravan renderedby h thin and thick towards the her as I approached, and when the caravan with their deliberate gait at last reached the station, I was found there seated already on a huge marble step

XIV

PERSEPOLIS

The first thing that strikes the eyes of the traveller on the flat land of ancient Passargada is that mausoleu Soloe to be the to this, maintain that it coe marble blocks, and stands upon a marble base formed by six marble slabs of enormous thickness placed one upon the other; each slab terrace-like di six steps The structure above it is a roo of which consists each of one enormous block of marble The narro entrance is always open The Mohammedans use the interior of the roo about for that purpose After I had with great difficulty claained admission to the interior of the azed for soe blocks, to move which from their places seemed an utter impossibility The names of numerous celebrated European travellers could be seen carved into the reat ed in deciphering the latter when a Persian, apparently belonging to the no in tents in this part of the country, ca a few pennies by doing a guide's business, and said, ”Hadji, there are no such huge blocks to be seen in Bagdad, are there? But come with me, I shall show thee others like them Come and look at the ruins of ancient Guzi” I immediately followed him to the ruins of the ancient palace, popularly called ”Soloe arch of a gate, built of blackthe beauty of these ruins, or astonished at the size of the stones, he invariably volunteers the following remark: ”Art thou not aware that Solomon could freely dispose of the _divs_ (devils) and all the spirits of the lower regions? It cost hih the air brought hiest stones and the most costly objects from India, Tchin-u-Matchin (China) and from Kuhi Kaff”

We continued our journey toward _Sivend_, going for several hours through a e, but went up to an e the su in a line, close to each other The whole settlement resembled a bazaar; and as the huts were closed on three sides and always re in them were open to every one alike, as much as if all the huts had formed but one house One hundred and twenty faether in sih there be rich and poor ast them, a theft rarely occurs Indeed people said that the population of the whole village were the descendants of one coether on terms of the most intioverned by the head of the fae and priest to them, and lived apart in a white tent

[Illustration: TAKH-TA-RA-WAN (A Moving Throne used by the Persian nobility)]

In leaving this place, on the 2nd of October, we proceeded towards theparts of Persia The caravan was not far from _Kenare_, in the vicinity of which the celebrated ruins of Persepolis are to be seen With the prospect of soon seeing these ruins before ress of the caravan rather slow, and deter inquired of sohout, the shortest road leading to theht, and e arrived at the proins, I separated fro continually to the left, I followed the ht theof the caravan bells Iout all the time for the much-mentioned ruins, the remarkable architectural monuments of remote antiquity After lapse of about a quarter of an hour there loo tall for like so many spectres The stillness around me seemed awful, and the clatter of my animal's small shoe sounded far away in the unpeopled solitude I now cah engravings of theht of them I paused, deeply moved, and stoodnearer, I went up the steps with feelings of piety and profound veneration, then passed through the gigantic gate to the row of coluazed upon the colu ti, it seemed to me as if the spectacle of these ruins of four thousand years ago had turned me, too, into a statue The sublimity of the ancient monuments of Persepolis cannot fail deeply to affect the traveller from whatever point of view he may have approached theht My feelings, then,to see them with feverish iht in the spectral twilight of the early dawn As I sat gazing rapt attention at the tall coluantic forms which had risen from the remote past of forty centuries to tell me, the traveller who had strayed here froe es in the East I did not awake from my reverie until the sun had risen froolden tints the heads of the colu their exquisite worke curtain had been suddenly drawn aside, a very different spectacle presented itself to ht The so columns and walls all disappeared as if by enchantolden sunshi+ne, beckoned to me on every side exquisitely carved capitals of columns, reliefs of wonderful beauty, all so natural, so fresh as if the last sounds of the chisel had just died away One sculptured relief shows a sole with measured step; on another a troop of prisoners, chained to each other by their necks, are advancing slowly in front of the proud victor; another again represents a giganticup you see, in several places, a king sitting, with earnest , and at back of hi staff, and the other a sun umbrella The finished accuracy shown in the dresses and the figures is truly ad of the features and in the various expressions of the human countenance is what lends such a peculiar charine that the coldthese reination of the young traveller, but rouse the enthusiase and experience One is at a loss to knohich more to admire, the extraordinary manual skill, or the exquisite taste visible everywhere, in every part of the preserved ruins Here, as in Egypt, e blocks of stone, froether, in spite of their enorreat difficulty discover the place where they are joined

I hbourhood of Persepolis with no e is not spoken hted with the chance of having a talk in their own language, that in the kindness of their hearts they providedmy whole stay, with bread and milk, and even took care of ly not to reht at the ruins on account of the innumerable evil spirits that haunted the an infernal noise They said that _Thakhti Djemshi+d_ (Djemshi+d's Throne)--the native na Dje is said to have had a cup, hich he had only to touch his lips, in order to realize all his heart's desires; at thefrom the east, and artists from the west The numerous verses and inscriptions on every part of the walls testify to the great respect entertained by the Persians for Persepolis

The legend has it that these buildings stood intact and strong for ever so long a ti that ti, and no sort of harm or misfortune ever befell her Later on the Arabs came, and they envied the shi+-ites for these wonderful buildings, and in their envy they ures, thren the columns and left everywhere the traces of their destructive spirit After theratify their passion for treasures; they ransacked the place and took aith theis carried away besides large blocks of stone for talismans

Since that time adversity and misery had been the lot of Persia; shi+raz was visited by an earthquake, then came the cholera, the faive of the ruins, but the Turkish Nomads, the remains of the forht To them the masterpieces of architecture and sculpture are objects of the utmost indifference, and they will often pull down the proudest anda few ounces of the lead which holds together the several segantic coluhted to see one of these columns come down by itself; they immediately make a rush at it, and scoop the lead out of the crevices of the stones