Part 13 (1/2)
The Persian never tires of dwelling on adventures with Turkostory A Persian general had sent his troops of six thousandbehind for a few minutes to enjoy comfortably the last whiffs of his kalian He had just finished his pipe and was about to join his soldiers, followed by a few body servants, when he was pounced upon by a body of Turkomans and carried away on their swift horses In a few minutes he was robbed and made captive, and a feeeks later was sold as a slave in the market of Khiva for the surim was captured on his way to the shrine of I enemy, and had just time to hide his little store behind a stone ere the plunderers caht to Khiva, he wrote from thence to his tender spouse as follows: ”My dear child, in such and such a place, under such and such a stone, I have hidden forty ducats Send thirty of the husband, and take care of the remainder until I return froe, in which I must now, perforce, perforood cause here for fear and caution, but the absurd pusillanimity of the Iranians is the main source of their misfortunes Their caravans are wont to assee masses
They are protected by soldiers with draords, and cannons with theirOften their numbers are very considerable No sooner, however, do a few desperate desert robbers make their appearance than caravan and escort alike lose their courage and presence ofaway their weapons, offer all their property to the ene out their hands to be fettered, allow the, captivity and slavery I rode from station to station with my Tartar for my only escort--a journey which no European had ever made before me Of course I arned not to do so
But in my Turkoman dress what cared I for Turkoman robbers? As for ht espy a countryman of his If we had fallen in with so as ere in a shi+-ite land, I believe that so far fro a mollah of their own faith, they would have rewarded us richly for the fatiha which ould have bestowed on them
For four days I wandered in the steppe; once in the dusk of the evening I lost le Turkoman crossed my path I met no one except a few scared Persian travellers
The reader will easily ierness hich the traveller's eyes look out for the gardens which surround Shahrud As this town is situated at the foot of a mountain, it is visible for miles off on the plain The wearied horseman thinks he has already reached the end of his day's journey, when it is in reality five German miles distant The road is aswhatsoever to attract the eye In su to utter want of water, it must be very unpleasant to travel over it Unfortunately I had e which lies in the vicinity of Shahrud for the town itself, which at the point of the road was concealed in a hollow My anger when I discovered my mistake may be easily conceived It was in truth no joke to have added to the long day's journey a good half-hour's additional ride I had ht before, and it was already past six o'clock in the evening, when I at last gained the badly paved streets of Shahrud, and dismounted in one of its principal caravansaries My poor beast was utterly exhausted, and I myself scarcely less so But as I looked around the square of the caravansary, how great wasa son of Britain, yes, actually an unnolishman alone here in Shahrud--that is certainly a rarity, alh apparently absorbed in deep thought, regardedeyes My Bokhariot dress, and ue had attracted his attention Who knohat he thought of me then? For myself, in spite of my extreme exhaustion, I hastened as well as I could to this extraordinary _rencontre_ I draggedat him eary eyes, addressed him with a ”How are you, sir?” He appeared not to have understoodfroreatest astonishave vent to his feelings with ”Well I---- Where have you learned English?” asked he, sta with emotion; ”perhaps in India” I should have liked to have screwed up his curiosity a peg or two higher, and at any other ti ride had so thoroughly tiredon the joke I made a plain confession of what and who I was His joy was indescribable To the great astonisharded me as a true believer, he embracedtogether, and I allowed myself to be induced to rest there the whole of next day; for it did the poor fellow no end of good to be able to speak of the West after six months' separation fro he was robbed and ent for a large Lancashi+re house, for which he had to purchase cotton He had to carry a great deal of ot, as do toorepresentations of its lying agents in Europe would lead us to suppose, and that one cannot place much reliance on passports and royal fir Teheran I had a journey of eleven days yet before me
The road is safe The only point of interest offered along the stations is the observation of the contrast between the manners of the inhabitants of Khorassan and those of Irak The proximity of Central Asia has left its mark of many rude habits on the people of Khorassan, whilst the polish of Iranian civilization is unmistakable in the inhabitants of Irak The traveller who is supposed to be possessed of worldly means is always sure here of most polite treatment Not but that in outward appearance they pretend to a vast auest is treated as a e He is overwhelmed with the very quintessence of courtly phrases which accompany the presents offered to him But he had better be careful of his purse if he is uninitiated in the intricacies of Persian politeness I had beco my travels in Southern Persia, and on such occasions I always played the Iranian,compliments with phrases even more complimentary I accepted, of course, the presents offered me, but never failed with ift to partake of it It rarely happened that he was proof against h-flown bombast, and quotations fro coht on the food and fruits he had himself heaped on the _khondja_ (wooden table), and tell nificant shakes of the head, ”Effendi, thou art more Iranian than the Iranians; thou art too polished to be sincere”
The nearer we approached Teheran the worse became the weather We were now in the latter part of Dece winter while still on the plains; but here, in ions, it was doubly severe The tees, and a journey of a few hours often makes a serious difference
But the weather in the two stations of Goshe and Ahuan was so very severe as to cause me anxiety These two places are situated on a mountain, and can afford accommodation to but a small number of people
I fared tolerably well at Goshe, where I had the caravansary all to e myself comfortably and cosily, while outside a cruel, bitter cold prevailed The next day, on my way to Ahuan, I found snow innorth wind compelled me often to dis The snow lay already several feet deep when I arrived at Ahuan, and it was frozen so hard as to for sight of the solitary post-house, I had but one intense longing, to get beneath a roof and to find a good fire by which to war over the hills, white with snow, could not discover within its range anywhere a human habitation or even the wreck of one We rode into the yard of the tchaparkhane in our usual demonstrative manner in order to attract attention The postood ohted as he led me into a smoky, but withal well-sheltered roo, as he expatiated at great length, with an air of great importance, on the expected arrival of the lady of Sipeh Salar, the Persian generalissiriht or the following day with a retinue of from forty to sixty servants To be overtaken by there accommodations as this post-house did, would of course be far from pleasant But the likelihood of such an event little disturbed my equanimity; on the contrary I made myself and an to blaze cheerily on the hearth, and the tea to send its steah the room, I entirely lost all sense of the cold and disco to the shrill whistling of rude Boreas without, who see escaped his fury, I gave no thought to the probability of being ousted from my comfortable quarters After I had taken h an to undress I had thrown myself on my couch, ht, through the howling of the wind I heard the tramp of a troop of horsemen I had scarcely time to jump up from my bed when the whole cavalcade dashed into the court with clashi+ng arms, oaths and shouts In an instant they were at my door, which was of course bolted
”Hallo! who is here? Out with you! The lady of Sipeh Salar, a princess of royal blood, is come; every one must turn out and ent reasons for not i the door The men asked of the post that it was only a hadji, and he too a heretic, a Sunnite, they began to level their swords and the butt ends of their guns at the door, crying out, ”Ha, hadji! take thyself off, or wilt thou have us grind thy bones toand a very critical one It is but a sorry jest to be turned out of a warm shelter, where one is perfectly coht in the open air It was not, perhaps, so much the fear of harm from exposure to the cold as the suddenness of the surprise and the shock of the unwelcoht not to yield, but fearlessly to accept the challenge My Tartar, as in the rooun and sword, while I handed ave hin to do so I then took up a position near the door, firmly resolved to fire at the first person ould intrude My martial preparations seean to parley Indeed I reance of the Persian which I eered theht beme to be a Bokhariot ”Who art thou, then? Speak, man, it seems thou art no hadji,”
was now heard from without ”Who talks about hadjis?” I cried; ”aith that abusive word! I am neither Bokhariot nor Persian I have the honour to be a European, and my name is Vambery Sahib”
Silence followed this speech of mine My assailants seemed to be utterly du on my Tartar, who now, for the first time, heard from his hadji fellow-traveller's own lips that he whom he had looked upon as a true believer was a European and that his real na wildly, he stared at lance froed their tactics The name of European, that word of terror for Orientals, produced a ic effect
Terms of abuse were followed by expressions of politeness; ht me to alloo of the principal members of the escort to share n themselves to occupy the barn and the stable, I opened the door to the tre Persians My features convinced them at once of the truth of my assertions Our conversation soon became very lively and friendly, and in the course of half an hourin a corner of the rooence in arrack
There they lay snoring like horses I then appliedreeable surprise, quite willing to appreciatewhen I left the snow-clad hills, and rode over the cheerful plain of Daan, the recollection of the adventure came back to hts I was disposed to quake soer an is supposed to be the ancient Hecatoates); a supposition which our archaeologists will hbourhood affords no trace of a city to which the hundred gates e deductions from all assertions made by either Greeks or Persians, who rival each other in the noble art of bragging and exaggerating If we reduce the hundred gates to twenty, it will still remain a matter of considerable difficulty to discover a city of over twenty gates in the obscure spot now called Daan The place boasts of scarcely more than a hundred houses, and two miserable caravansaries in the an's reputation for importance in coan I travelled over two stations to Simnan, celebrated for its cotton, and still more for its tea-cakes Almost every town in Persia is conspicuous for some speciality, in the production of which it claims to be not only the foremost in Persia, but unrivalled in the whole world
shi+raz, for instance, is famous for lamb, Isfahan for peaches, Nathenz for pears, and so on The odd thing about it is, that on arriving in any of these towns and looking for the article so reatly disappointed as to its quality, or,still, he fails to find the article at all In Meshed I heard the tea-cakes of Simnan talked of, nay even in Herat; but as I had often had occasion to value these exaggerations at their true worth, I did not expect too much Nevertheless, I went into the bazaar to inquire after tea-cakes My search, long and painful, was rewarded by a few mouldy specimens ”Simnan,” said one, ”is justly celebrated for the excellence of this article, but the export is so tremendous that we are left without any” Another said: ”It is true that Simnam was once famous for the production of this article, but hard times have caused even the quality of the tea-cakes to deteriorate” Here at any rate people had the grace to invent soy is atte fraud of the pretended claim to the production of souise
The same sensations which overcareater intensity as I drew near Teheran, the starting-place of my adventurous journey, where I was to o resigned the paid with my life the penalty of my rash enterprise
XXIX
FROM TEHERAN TO TREBIZOND
The Persian capital appeared to ain, as the very abode of civilization and culture, affording to one's heart's content all the pleasures and refinements of European life Of course, a traveller fro to the city for the first ti the squalid h which hefroed A journey of only sixty days separates one city from the other; but in point of fact, there is such a difference in the social condition of Bokhara and Teheran, that centuries h the bazaar, after ain Alhted eyes andering over articles of luxury from Europe, toys, stuffs and cloths which I saw exhibited there The saenuity then struck me with a sort of ahich, recalled now, see, however, of which it was difficult to get rid When a hly and completely adapted himself to the Tartar mode of life, it is no wonder if, in the end, he turns half a Tartar hihly aware of his real nature in spite of his outward disguise, cannot bewith impunity The constant conceal work of his assin, produce their slow and silent but sure effect, in altering the man himself, in course of tiuised traveller inwardly rebel against the influences and i away his real self The impressions of the past losethe traveller hopelessly struggling in the toils of his own fiction, and the _role_ he had assumed soon becomes second nature with him
I fore in my behaviour was the theme of many facetious remarks froood-natured sallies
They ait, and above all eneral, an object of theirbeen transfor that even my eyes had assuood-natured ”chaff” afforded reat amusement It in no wise interfered with the extre restored to European society Nevertheless, besides the strange sensation of enjoying the rare luxury of undisturb I repose for several weeks, there were s in the customs and habits of reat difficulty The close-fitting European dress, especially, seemed to cramp me and to hamper me in my movements The shaved scalp was ill at ease under the burden of the hair which I allowed to grow The lively and soestures which accoe of views, on the part of the Europeans, looked to ht that they would be followed by the ue and walk, peculiar to military people, which I observed in the French officers in the Persian service, seemed to me odd, artificial and stilted Not but that it afforded me a secret pleasure to have occasion to ad ofcontrast to the slovenly and slouching gait of the Central Asiatics, a It would serve no purpose to point out to my readers, and to e perversion of views and tastes to which iven rise Those who, from personal observations, are enabled to draw a parallel between life in the East and West, will find no exaggeration inthat Teheran compared to Bokhara seemed to be a sort of Paris to me
The surprise and astonisheneral when the successful issue of my perilous adventure became known