No one slept that night because of the sand-flies and the need for keeping a vigilant watch. Indeed, the tents were packed shortly after sunset, and in a hot dawn we ascended to a considerable height above the valley, and then for many miles followed a stream in a wooded glen, where willows, planes, vines, rank grass, and a handsome yellow pea grew luxuriantly, looped together continually by the fragile Clematis orientalis. All that country would be pretty had it moisture and "atmosphere." The hillsides are covered with oaks and the Paliurus aculeatus on their lower slopes, rising out of withered flowers. All else is uncut sun-cured hay, and its pale uniform buff colour is soft, and an improvement on the glare of bare gravel.

Delays, occasioned by the caravan being misled by the guide, took us into the heat of the day, and before the narrow valley opened out into the basin surrounded by wooded spurs of hills in which Khanabad stands, it was noon. Men and animals suffered from the heat and length of that march. In the middle of this basin there is a good deal of cultivation, and opium, wheat, cotton, melons, grapes, and cucumbers grow well. Rice has already succeeded wheat, and will be reaped in November. Kalla Khanabad, the fort dwelling of Yahya Khan, with terraces of poplars, mulberries, pomegranates, and apricots below it, makes a good centre of a rather pretty view. Leaving it on the right we turned up a narrow valley with a small stream and irrigation channels, and close to a spring and some magnificent plane trees camped for Sunday on a level piece of blazing ground where the mercury stood at 106° on both days. This spot was remarkable for some very fine eryngiums growing by the stream, with blossoms of a beautiful "French blue," the size of a Seville orange.

The Khan's son, a most unprepossessing young man, called on me, and I received him under the trees, a number of retainers armed with long guns standing round the edge of the carpet. He was well dressed, but a savage in speech and deportment. As to the dress of the Bakhtiaris, the ordinary tribesmen wear coarse cotton shirts fastening at the side, but generally unfastened, blue cotton trousers, each leg two yards wide, loose at the bottom and drawn on a string at the top, webbing shoes, worsted socks if any, woollen girdles with a Kashmir pattern, and huge loose brown felt coats or cloaks with long sleeves, costing from fifteen to twenty-five krans each, and wearing for three or four years. The Khans frequently have their shulwars of black silk, and wear the ordinary Persian full-skirted coat, usually black, but "for best" one of fine blue or fawn cloth. All wear brown or white felt skull-caps, and shave their heads for a width of five inches from the brow to the nape of the neck, leaving long side-locks. The girdle supplies the place of pockets, and in it are deposited knives, the pipe, the tobacco-pouch, the flint and steel, and various etceteras.

Every man carries a long smooth-bore gun slung from his left shoulder, or a stout shillelagh, or a stick split and loaded at one end (the split being secured with strong leather), or all these weapons of offence and defence at once.

These very wide shulwars, much like the "divided garment," are not convenient in rough walking, and on the march a piece of the hem on the outer side is tucked into the girdle, producing at once the neat effect of knickerbockers.

The men are very well made. I have never seen deformity or lameness except from bullet wounds. They are not usually above the middle height, though that is exceeded by the men of the Zalaki tribe. They are darker than the Persians. As a general rule they have straight noses, with very fully expanded nostrils, good mouths, thin lips, straight or slightly curved eyebrows, dark gray or black eyes, hazel in a few instances, deeply set, and usually rather close together, well-developed foreheads, small ears, very small feet, and small hands with tapering fingers. The limbs below the knee are remarkably straight and well-developed, and the walk is always good.

It is not easy to say how the women are made, as their clothing gives no indications of form. They are long-limbed, and walk with a firm, even, elastic stride. They are frequently tall, and except when secluded are rarely stout. Their hands and feet are small. Their figures are spoilt (if they ever had any) by early maternity and hard work. At twenty a woman looks past forty. Many, perhaps it is not an exaggeration to say most, of them have narrowly escaped being handsome. Fine eyes, straight noses, and well-formed mouths with thin lips are the rule. The hair is always glossy and abundant, and the teeth of both sexes are white, regular, and healthy-looking, though toothache is a painfully common ailment.

The women's dress in the "higher classes" is much like that worn by the ordinary Persian women, with the exception of what I have elsewhere called "balloon trousers," but the hard-working tribesmen's wives are clothed in loose blue cotton trousers drawn in at the ankles, short open chemises, and short open jackets. A black or coloured kerchief covers the head, the ends hanging down behind or in front. They wear loose woollen shoes with leather soles. The dress is not pretty or picturesque, and is apt to be dirty and ragged, but it suits their lives and their hard work.

Both sexes stain the finger-nails and the palms of the hands with henna, and all wear amulets or charms suspended round the neck, or bound on the upper part of the arm. These consist of passages from the Koran, which are written on parchment in very small characters, and are enclosed in cases of silver or leather.

At night they merely take off the outer garment where they have two. The scanty ablutions are very curious. Each family possesses a metal jug of rather graceful form, with a long spout curiously curved, and the mode of washing, which points to an accustomed scarcity of water, is to pour a little into the palm of the right hand, and bathe the face, arms, and hands with it, soap not being used. They conclude by rinsing the mouth and rubbing the teeth either with the forefinger or with the aromatic leaf of a small pink salvia.

I called by appointment on the Khan's wives, sixteen in number. An ordinary tribesman marries as many wives as he can afford to house and keep. Poverty and monogamy are not allied here. Women do nearly all the work, large flocks create much female employment, and as it is "contrary to Bakhtiari custom" to employ female servants who are not wives, polygamy is very largely practised. On questioning the guides, who are usually very poor men, I find that they have two, three, and even four wives, the reverse of what is customary among the peasants of Turkey and Persia proper. The influence of a chief increases with the number of his wives, as it enlarges his own family connections, and those made by the marriages of his many sons and daughters. Large families are the rule. Six children is the average in a monogamous household, and the rate of infant mortality is very low.

The "fort" is really picturesque, though forlorn and dirty. It is built on the steep slope of a hill, and on one side is three stories in height. It has a long gallery in front, with fretwork above the posts which support the roof, round towers at two of the corners, and many irregular roofs, and steep zigzags cut in the rock lead up to it. The centre is a quadrangle. When I reached the gateway under the tower many women welcomed me, and led me down a darkish passage to the gallery aforesaid, which has a pretty view of low hills, with mulberries and pomegranates in the foreground. This gallery runs the whole length of the fort, and good rooms open upon it. It was furnished with rugs upon the floor, and two long wooden settees, covered with checked native blankets in squares of Indian yellow and madder red.

I had presents for the favourite wife, but as one man said this was the favourite, and another that, and the hungry eyes of sixteen women were fixed on the parcels, I took the safer course of presenting them to the Khan for the "ladies of the andarun." Yahya Khan sent to know if it would be agreeable to me for him to make his salaam to me, a proposal which I gladly accepted as a relief from the curiosity and disagreeable familiarity of the women. There was a complete rabble of women in the gallery, with crawling children and screaming babies—a forlorn, disorderly household, in which the component parts made no secret of their hatred and jealousy of each other.

I pitied the Khan as he came in to this Babel of intriguing women and untutored children—of women without womanliness and children without innocence—the lord and master of the women, but not in any noble sense their husband, nor is the house, or any polygamous house, in any sense a home.

The wife who, I was afterwards told, is the "reigning favourite" sat on the same settee as her lord, and he ignored the whole of them. Her father, Bagha Khan, asked me to give into his care the present for her, lest it should make the other wives jealous.

Yahya Khan rules a large part of the Pulawand tribe, 1000 families, and aspires to the chieftainship of its subdivisions, among which are the Bosakis, Hajwands, Isawands, and Hebidis, numbering 2800 families.[10]

He asked me if I thought England would occupy south-west Persia in the present Shah's lifetime? Which has the stronger army, England or Russia? Why England does not take Afghanistan? Did I think the Zil-es-Sultan had any chance of succeeding his father? but several times reverted to what seemed uppermost in his mind, the chances of a British occupation of Southern Persia, a subject on which I was unwilling to enter. He complained bitterly of Persian exactions, and said that the demand made on him this year is exactly double the sum fixed by the Amin-es-Sultan.

It is not easy to estimate the legitimate taxation. Probably it averages two tumans, or nearly fifteen shillings a family. The assessment of the tribes is fixed, but twenty, forty, and even sixty per cent extra is often taken from them by the authorities, who in their turn are squeezed at Tihran or Isfahan. Every cow, mule, ass, sheep, and goat is taxed. Horses pay nothing.

In order to get away from perilous topics, which had absolutely no interest for the women. I told him how interested I was in seeing all his people clothed in blue Manchester cottons, though England does not grow a tuft of cotton or a plant of indigo. I mentioned that the number of people dependent on the cotton industry in Britain equals the whole population of Persia, and this made such an impression on him that he asked me to repeat it three times. He described his tribe as prosperous, raising more wheat than it requires, and exporting 1000 tumans' worth of carpets annually.

It is curious that nomadic semi-savages should not only sow and harvest crops, and make carpets of dyed wool, as well as goats-hair rugs and cloth, horse-furniture, khūrjins, and socks of intricate patterns, but that they should understand the advantages of trade, and export not only mules, colts, and sheep, but large quantities of charcoal, which is carried as far as Hamadan; as well as gaz, gall-nuts, tobacco, opium, rice, gum mastic, clarified butter, the skins of the fox and a kind of marten, and cherry sticks for pipes.

Certainly the women are very industrious, rising at daylight to churn, working all day, weaving in the intervals, and late at night boiling the butter in their big caldrons. They make their own clothes and those of their husbands and children, except the felt coats, sewing with needles like skewers and very coarse loosely-twisted cotton thread. They sew backwards, i.e. from left to right, and seem to use none but a running stitch. Everywhere they have been delighted with gifts of English needles and thread, steel thimbles, and scissors.

When it is remembered that, in addition to all the "household" avocations which I have enumerated, they pitch and strike tents, do much of the loading and unloading of the baggage, and attend faithfully to their own offspring and to that of their flocks and herds, it will be realised that the life of a Bakhtiari wife is sufficiently laborious.

We were to have left that burning valley at 11 p.m., and when I returned at dusk from the fort the tents were folded and the loads ready for a moonlight march, but Yahya Khan sent to say that for the ostensible reason of the path being greatly obstructed by trees we could not start till daylight! Later he came with a number of tribesmen and haggled noisily for two hours about the payment of an escort, and the sheep a day which it would require. It was not a comfortable night, for the sand-flies were legion, and we did not get off till 4.30, when we were joined by Yahya Khan and his son, who accompanied us to the Pul-i-Hawa.

The path from Kalla Khanabad runs at a considerable elevation on wooded hillsides and slopes of shelving rock, only descending to cross some curious ribs of conglomerate and the streams which flow into the Ab-i-Diz. There are frequent glimpses of the river, which has the exquisite green colour noticeable in nearly all the streams of this part of Luristan. At a distance of a few miles from Khanabad the valley, which has been pretty wide, and allows the river to expand into smooth green reaches, narrows suddenly, and the Ab-i-Diz, a full, strong stream, falls in a very fine waterfall over a natural dam or ledge of rock, which crosses it at its broadest part, and is then suddenly compressed into a narrow passage between cliffs and ledges of bituminous limestone, the lowest of which is a continuation of the path which descends upon it by some steep zigzags.

Below this gorge the river opens out into a smooth green stretch, where it reposes briefly before starting on a wild and fretted course through deep chasms among precipitous mountains, till it emerges on the plains above Dizful. These limestone cliffs exude much bitumen, and there is a so-called bituminous spring. Our men took the opportunity of collecting the bitumen and rolling it into balls for future use, as it is esteemed a good remedy for dyspepsia and "bad blood."

At the narrowest part of its channel the river is crossed by a twig bridge wide enough for laden animals, supported on the left bank by some tree-stems kept steady by a mass of stones. In the middle it takes a steepish upward turn, and hangs on to the opposite cliff at a considerable elevation. The path up from it to the top of the cliff is very narrow, and zigzags by broken ledges between walls of rock. For loaded animals it is a very bad place, and the caravan took an hour and a half to cross, though only four mules were unloaded, the rest being helped across by men at their heads and tails. Several of them fell on the difficult climb from the bridge. It would be bad enough if the roadway of osiers were level, but it shelves slightly to the south. That gorge is a very interesting break in an uninteresting and monotonous region, and the broad fall above the bridge is not without elements of grandeur. The altitude of the river over which the Pul-i-Hawa hangs is only 3800 feet, the lowest attained on this journey.

The popular nomenclature is adopted here, but it would be more accurate to call this stream the Ab-i-Burujird, and to defer conferring the name of Ab-i-Diz upon it till the two great branches have united far below this point. These are the Ab-i-Burujird, rising to the west of Burujird, which with the tributaries which enter it before it reaches the Tang-i-Bahrain, drains the great plain of Silakhor, and the Ab-i-Basnoi, a part of which has been referred to under its local name of Kakulistan, or "the Curl," which drains the upper part of the Persian district of Faraidan, and receives the important tributaries of the Guwa and the Gokun before its junction with the Ab-i-Burujird. A tributary rising in the Kuh-i-Rang has been locally considered the head-water of the Ab-i-Diz.

Leaving the Ab-i-Diz, the path pursues valleys with streams and dry torrent-beds, much wooded with oak and hawthorn, with hills above, buff with uncut sun-cured hay, magnificent pasturage, but scantily supplied with water.

The belut, or oak, grows abundantly in these valleys, and on it is chiefly collected the deposit called gaz, a sweetish glaze upon the leaf, which is not produced every year, and which is rather obscure in its origin. When boiled with the leaves it forms a shiny bottle-green mass, but when the water is drained from them and carefully skimmed, it cools into a very white paste which, when made up with rose-water and chopped almonds, is cut into blocks, and is esteemed everywhere. It is mentioned by Diodorus Siculus.[11] The unwatered valleys are wooded with the Paliurus aculeata chiefly, and the jujube tree (Zizyphus vulgaris), which abounds among the Bakhtiari mountains.

The heat was frightful, and progress was very slow, owing to the low projecting branches of trees, which delayed the baggage and tore some of the tents. In places the path was farther obstructed by a species of liana known in New Zealand as "a lawyer," with hooked thorns.

We passed by the steep ledgy village of Shahbadar, on the roofs of which I rode inadvertently, till the shouts of the people showed me my error, and encamped on the only available spot which could be found, a steep, bare prominence above a hollow, in which is a spring surrounded by some fine plane trees. The Shahbadar people live in their village for three winter months only, and were encamped above us, and there were two large camps below. Men from each of them warned us to beware of the others, for they were robbers, and there was a great deal of dexterous pilfering, which reduced my table equipments to a copper mug, one plate, and a knife and fork. My shuldari was torn to pieces, and pulled down over me, by a lively mule which cantered among the tent ropes.

The afternoon, with the mercury at 103°, was spent in entertaining successive crowds, not exactly rude, but full of untamed curiosity. I amused them to their complete satisfaction by letting them blow my whistle, fill my air-cushion, and put the whalebones into my collapsible basins. One of Milward's self-threading needles, which had luckily been found in my carpet, surprised them beyond measure. Every man and woman insisted on threading it with the eyes shut, and the ketchuda of one camp offered to barter a sheep for it. They said that my shabby tent, with its few and shabby equipments, was "fit for God!"

The camps passed on that day were constructed of booths made of stems of trees with the bark on, the roofs being made of closely-woven branches with the leaves on. These booths are erected round a square with mat walls, and face outwards, a sort of privacy being obtained by backs of coarse reed mats four feet high, and mat divisions between the dwellings. The sheep, goats, and cattle are driven into the square at night through a narrow entrance walled with mats.

Since leaving the Karun very few horses have been seen, and the few have been of a very inferior class. Even Yahya Khan, who has the reputation of being rich, rode a horse not superior to a common pack animal. The people we have been among lately have no horses or mares, the men walk, and the loads are carried on cows and asses.

In the greater part of this country I have not seen a mule, with the exception of some mule foals on a high pass near Ali-kuh. The Bakhtiaris breed mules, however, and sell them in Isfahan in the spring, but rarely use them for burden. They breed horses in some places, exporting the colts and keeping the fillies. Their horses are small and not good-looking, but are wiry and enduring, and as surefooted as mules. In fact they will go anywhere. One check on the breeding of good horses is that, when a man has a good foal, he is often compelled to make a present of it to any superior who fancies it.

The horses are shod, as in Persia proper, with thin iron plates covering nearly the whole hoof, secured by six big-headed nails. Reared in camps and among children, they are perfectly gentle and scarcely require breaking. A good Bakhtiari horse can be bought for £6 or £8. A good mule is worth from £7 to £11. Asses are innumerable, and are used for transporting baggage, equally with oxen and small cows. A good donkey can be bought for 30s.

The goats are very big and long-haired. The sheep, which nearly always are like the goats brown or black, and very tall, are invariably of the breed with the great pendulous tails, which sometimes weigh nearly eight pounds. They give a great deal of milk, and it is on this, not on cows' milk, that the people rely for the greater part of their food, their cheese, curds, mast, and roghan.

The goat-skins are invaluable to them. They use them for holding water and milk, and as churns for their butter. They make all their tents, their tent carpets, and their sacks for holding wool of goat's-hair, woven on rude portable looms.

The female costume changed at Shahbadar. The women now wear loose garments like nightgowns, open to the waist, and reaching from the neck to the feet, and red trousers, tight below the knee, but rarely visible below the outer dress. Their notion of ornament consists in having a branch or frond tattooed up the throat.

These tribes breed cattle extensively. One camp possessed over 300 young beasts. The calves are nourished by their mothers up to two years old. They have a few white angora goats of great beauty, but the majority are black and are valued chiefly for their milk and for their long coarse hair.

A march through fierce heat at a low level brought us at noon to the village of Imamzada-i-Mamil. The road, after continuing along the same wooded valley, which in a happier climate would be called a glen, emerges on scenery truly "park-like," softly-outlined hills covered with buff grass, and wooded on their gently-curved slopes with oak and hawthorn, fringing off into clumps and single trees. Smooth broad valleys, first of buff pasture, and then of golden wheat or green maize, lie among the hills. All is soft and lowland, and was bathed that day in a dreamy blue heat haze. Not a mountain rose above the gently-curved hills which were painted in soft blue on the sky of the distant horizon. The natural wood ceased. The surroundings underwent an abrupt change. Is it a change for the better, I wonder? Three months and a week have been spent in zigzagging among some of the loftiest mountains and deepest valleys of Persia, and they now lie behind, among the things that were. In fact, Khuramabad, from which I write, is not only out of the Bakhtiari country, but the Bakhtiari Lurs are left behind, and we are among the fierce and undisciplined tribes of the Feili Lurs.

The baggage animals were not dubious, as I am, as to the advantages of the change. When we reached the open, Cock o' the Walk threw up his beautiful head, knocked down the man who led him, and with a joyous neigh set off at a canter, followed by all the mules and horses, some cantering, some trotting, regardless of their loads, and regardless of everything, proceeding irresponsibly, almost knocking one out of the saddle by striking one with the sharp edges of yekdans and tent poles, till they were headed off by mounted men, after which some of them rolled, loads and all, on the soft buff grass. This escapade shows what condition they are in after three months of hard mountain work.

Reaching the village at noon, we halted till moonrise at midnight on an eminence with some fine plane and walnut trees upon it above a stream which issues from below an imamzada on a height, and passes close to a graveyard. Possibly this contaminates the water, for there has been a great outbreak of diphtheria, which has been very fatal. It is quite a small village, but thirteen children suffering from the most malignant form of the malady, some of them really dying at the time, were brought to me during the afternoon, as well as some people ill of what appeared to be typhoid fever. One young creature, very ill, was carried three miles on her father's back, though I had sent word that I would call and see her at night. She died a few hours later of the exhaustion brought on by the journey. The mercury that afternoon reached 103° in the shade.

Soon after midnight the mules were silently loaded, and we "stole silently away," to ride through the territory of the powerful Sagwands, a robber tribe, and reached this place in eight hours, having done twenty-two and a half miles. It was a march full of risk, through valleys crowded with camps, and the guide who rode in front was very much frightened whenever the tremendous barking of the camp dogs threatened to bring robbers down on us in the uncertain light. The caravan was kept in steady order, and the rearguard was frequently hailed by the leader. Nothing happened, and when day broke we were in open russet country, among low, formless gravelly hills, with the striking range of rocky mountains which hems in Khuramabad in front, under a hazy sky.

Later, fording the Kashgan, I got upon the Burujird caravan road, along which are telegraph poles, and on which there was much caravan traffic. Recrossing the Kashgan, but this time by a good two-arched bridge of brick on stone piers, the Yafta Kuh came in sight, and Khuramabad with its green gardens, its walls of precipitous mountains, and its ruined fort on an isolated and most picturesque rock in the centre of the town—a very striking view.

Khuramabad, before the fourteenth century, was called Diz Siyah, or the black fort, and was the capital of the Atabegs, the powerful kings who reigned in Luri-Kushuk from a.d. 1155 to about a.d. 1600. Sir H. Rawlinson does not regard any of its remains as earlier than the eleventh or twelfth century.

The camps are outside the town, on a stretch of burning gravel, with some scorched pasture beyond it, on which are Ilyat camps, then there are divers ranges of blackish and reddish mountains, with pale splashes of scorched herbage when there is any at all. Behind my tent are a clump of willows, an irrigating stream, large gardens full of fruit trees and melons, and legions of mosquitos.

Circumstances have changed, and the surroundings now belong to the showy civilisation of Persia. As I was lying under the trees, quite "knocked up" by the long and fatiguing night march and the great heat, I heard fluent French being spoken with a good accent. The Hakīm of the Governor had called. Cavalcades of Persians on showy horses gaily caparisoned dashed past frequently. Ten infantrymen arrived as a guard and stacked their arms under the willows, and four obsequious servants brought me trays of fruit and sweetmeats put up in vine leaves from the Governor. Melons are a drug. The servants are amusing themselves in the bazars. It is a bewildering transition.

The altitude is only 4050 feet, and the heat is awful—the heat of the Indian plains without Indian appliances. When the men took up stones with which to hammer the tent pegs they dropped them "like hot potatoes." The paraffin candles melt. Milk turns sour in one hour. Even night brings little coolness. It is only heat and darkness instead of heat and light.

I was too much exhausted by heat and fatigue to march last night, and rested to-day as far as was possible, merely going to pay my respects to the Governor of Luristan, the Nizam-ul-Khilwar, and the ladies of his haram. The characteristics of this official's face are anxiety and unhappiness. There was the usual Persian etiquette—attendants in the rear, scribes and mollahs bowing and kneeling in front, and tea and cigarettes in the pretty garden of the palace, of which cypresses, pomegranates, and roses are the chief features. Mirza was not allowed to attend me in the andarun, but a munshi who spoke a little very bad French and understood less stood behind a curtain and attempted to interpret, but failed so signally that after one or two compliments I was obliged to leave, after ascertaining that a really beautiful girl of fourteen is the "reigning favourite." The women's rooms were pretty, and the women themselves were richly but elegantly dressed, and graceful in manner, though under difficulties. After a visit to the ruined fort, an interesting and picturesque piece of masonry, I rode unmolested through the town and bazars.

Khuramabad, the importance of which lies in its situation on what is regarded as the best commercial route from Shuster to Tihran, etc., is the capital of the Feili Lurs and the residence of the Governor of Luristan. Picturesque at a distance beyond any Persian town that I have seen, with its citadel rising in the midst of a precipitous pass, its houses grouped round the base, its fine bridge, its wooded gardens, its greenery, and the rich valley to the south of the gorge in which it stands, it successfully rivals any Persian town in its squalor, dirt, evil odours, and ruinous condition. Two-thirds of what was "the once famous capital of the Atabegs" are now "ruinous heaps." The bazars are small, badly supplied, dark, and rude; and the roads are nothing but foul alleys, possibly once paved, but now full of ridges, holes, ruins, rubbish, lean and mangy dogs, beggarly-looking men, and broken channels of water, which, dribbling over the soil in the bazars and everywhere else in green and black slime, gives forth pestiferous odours in the hot sun.

The people slouch about slowly. They are evidently very poor, and the merchants have the melancholy apathetic look which tells that "trade is bad." The Feili Lurs, who render the caravan route to Dizful incessantly insecure, paralyse the trade of what should and might be a prosperous "distributing point," and the Persian Government, though it keeps a regiment of soldiers here, is unsuccessful in checking, far less in curing the chronic disorder which has produced a nearly complete stagnation in trade.

I am all the more disappointed with the wretched condition of Khuramabad because the decayed state of its walls is concealed by trees, and it is entered by a handsome bridge 18 feet wide and 900 long, with twenty-eight pointed arches of solid masonry, with a fine caravanserai with a tiled entrance on its left side. The Bala Hissar is a really striking object, its pile of ancient buildings crowning the steep mass of naked rock which rises out of the dark greenery and lofty poplars and cypresses of the irrigated gardens. This fort, which is in ruins, encloses within its double walls the Wali's palace and other official buildings, and a fine reservoir, 178 feet by 118, fed by a vigorous spring. In the gardens by the river, north of the fort, are some remains of the walls and towers of the ancient Atabeg capital, and there are also ruins of an aqueduct and of an ancient bridge, of which ten arches are still standing. The most interesting relic, however, is a round tower sixty feet high in fairly good preservation, with a Kufic inscription round the top.

It is said that there are 1200 houses in Khuramabad, which would give it a population of over 7000. It has been visited by several Englishmen for purposes of trade or research, and it has doubtless made the same impression upon them all as it does upon me.

Burujird, August 9.—A night march of twenty-two miles through perilous country brought us in blazing heat to an encampment of Seyyids of the Bairanawand tribe, fine-looking men, showing in their haughty bearing their pride in their illustrious lineage, but not above depriving us during the night of many useful articles. Their camp had three streets of tents, in front of which oxen were treading out wheat all day long. These Seyyids have much wealth in mares and oxen. Again we started at moonrise for what was regarded as a dangerous march, a party of Sagwands having gone on ahead, with hostile intentions, it was said.

However, nothing happened, and nothing was heard except the shouts of our own charvadars and the pandemonium made by the simultaneous barking of huge dogs in the many camps we passed but could not see. We rode through cultivated valleys full of nomads, forded the placid Bawali, and at dawn were at the foot of the grand pass of Handawan, 7500 feet in altitude, which is ascended by steep zigzags over worn rock ledges, and the dry boulder-strewn bed of a torrent. A descent of 2000 feet and a long ride among large formless hills took us to a narrow gorge or chasm with a fine mountain torrent, and thence to the magnificent Tang-i-Buzful, from which we emerged with some suddenness on the slopes of the low foot-hills on the north side of the plain of Burujird or Silakhor.

This very rich plain, about thirty miles long by from six to eight broad, has been described as "waterlogged," and the level of the water is only a foot below the surface. Certainly very numerous springs and streams rise along the hill slopes which we traversed and flow down into the plain, which is singularly flat, and most of it only relieved from complete monotony by the villages which, to the number of 180, are sprinkled over it, many of them raised on artificial mounds, at once to avoid the miasma from the rice-fields and as a protection from the Lurs. Above the south-eastern end rises the grand bulk of Shuturun Kuh, with a few snow-patches still lingering, and towards the other lies the town of Burujird, the neighbourhood of which for a few miles is well planted, but most of the plain is devoid of trees. It is watered by many streams, which flow into the Burujird river and the Kamand-Ab, which uniting, leave the plain by the magnificent Tang-i-Bahrain.

The first view, on emerging from the buff treeless mountains, was very attractive. The tall grass of the rich marshy pastures rippled in the breeze in wavelets of a steely sheen. Brown villages on mounds contrasted with the vivid green of the young rice. Towards Burujird, of which nothing but the gilding of a dome was visible, a mass of dark greenery refreshed the eyes. The charm of the whole was the contrast between the "dry and thirsty land where no water is" and abundant moisture, between the scanty and scorched herbage of the arid mountains and the "trees planted by the rivers of water," but I confess that the length and overpowering fatigue of that thirty-three miles' march, much of it in blazing heat, following on three nights without sleep, soon dulled my admiration of the plain. Hour after hour passed on its gravelly margin, then came melon beds, files of donkeys loaded with melons in nets, gardens of cucumbers and gourds, each with its "lodge," irrigation channels, dykes, apricot and mulberry orchards, lanes bordered with the graceful elægnus, a large and busy village, where after a very uncertain progress we got a local guide, and then a low isolated hill, crowned by a dwelling arranged for security, and a liberally planted garden, a platform with terraced slopes and straight formal walks, a terrace with a fine view, and two tanks full of turtles (which abound in many places) under large willows, giving a pleasant shade. Between them I have pitched my tents, with the lines of an old hymn constantly occurring to me—

Burujird, one and a half mile off, and scarcely seen above the intervening woods, gives a suggestion of civilisation to the landscape. In the sunset, which is somewhat fiery, Shuturun and the precipices of the Tang-i-Bahrain are reddening.

The last three marches have been more severe than the whole travelling of the last three months. Happy thought, that no call to "boot and saddle" will break the stillness of to-morrow morning!

I. L. B.

LETTER XXI

Burujird, Aug. 16.

A week has glided away since I sent my last diary letter, with only two events of direct personal interest, one being that I have bought a young, powerful little Bakhtiari horse, which has been in camp since we left the Karun river, a dark bay, with black points, big feet, a big ugly head, and big flopping ears, but otherwise passably good-looking, an unsuspicious animal, brought up in tent life, with children rolling about among his feet, and as yet quite ignorant that man can be anything but his friend. I intend to look after his well-being, but not to make a pet of him.

The other event occurred on the morning after our arrival, and took the place of the "boot and saddle" call, for I was awakened very early by a hubbub round my tent, the interpretation of which was that a packing case in three compartments, containing my cooking utensils, remaining table equipments, and stores, had been carried off before daylight, deposited in an adjacent plantation, broken open, and emptied. Thus I was left with nothing, and have been unable to get anything in the bazars here except two cooking pots and a tin teapot of unique construction made to order. The few other things which I still regard as absolute necessaries, a cup, plate, knife, fork, and spoon, have been lent me by the Agha. All my tea is gone, the worst loss of all.

Later in the day Hassan came in a quiet rage, saying that he would leave for Isfahan at once, because Mirza had accused him of not keeping an efficient watch, and shortly afterwards Mahomet Ali and his handsome donkey actually did leave.[12] Burujird bears a very bad reputation. Here, last year, a young English officer was robbed of his tents and horses, and everything but the clothes he wore.

The Governor, on hearing of the theft, said I should not have "camped in the wilderness," the "wilderness" being a beautifully kept garden with a gardener (who was arrested) and a house. For the last week a guard of six soldiers has watched by day and night.

The news received from the Bakhtiari country is rather startling. Mirab Khan, who looked too ill and frail for active warfare, sent a messenger with a letter to Khaja Taimur, urging him to join him in an attack on Aslam Khan. The letter was intercepted by this "Judas," and now the country from Kalahoma to Khanabad is in a flame. Serious troubles have broken out in this plain, all the Khans of the Sagwand tribe having united to rise against the payment of a tribute which they regard as heavy enough to "crush the life out of the people." The Hākim has telegraphed for troops, and the governor of Luristan is said to be coming with 500 men.

A "tribute insurrection," on a larger or smaller scale, is a common autumnal event. The Khans complain of being oppressed by "merciless exactions." They say that the tribute fixed by the Shah is "not too much," but that it is doubled and more by the rapacity of governors, and that the people are growing poorer every year. They complain that when they decline to pay more than the tribute fixed by the Amin-es-Sultan, soldiers are sent, who drive off their mares, herds of cattle, and flocks to the extent of three, four, and five times the sum demanded.

These few words contain the substance of statements almost universally made. There is probably another side, and they may be true in part only. The tribesmen of Silakhor state that they had protested and appealed in vain before they decided on resistance. Every Khan with whom I have conversed has besought me to lay his case before the "English Vakil" at Tihran.

This widely-diffused belief in England as the redresser of wrongs is very touching, and very palatable to one's national pride. All these people have heard of the way in which the cultivators in India have been treated, of "land settlements" and English "settlement officers," and they say, "England could make everything right for us." So she could, "and she would"! As the governors pay large sums for offices from which they are removable at the Shah's pleasure, and as the lower officials all pay more or less heavily for their positions, we may reasonably infer that all, from the highest to the lowest, put on the screw, and squeeze all they can out of the people, over and above the tribute fixed at Tihran. Near views of Oriental despotisms are as disenchanting as near views of "the noble savage," for they contain within themselves the seeds of "all villainies," which rarely, if ever, fail of fructification.

Mirza Karim Khan, the Governor of Burujird, called a few days ago, a young harassed-looking man, with very fine features, but a look of serious bad health. He complained so much that the Agha asked his attendant, a very juvenile Hakīm, speaking a little scarcely intelligible French, if he would object to the Governor taking something from the famous "leather box," and the effect was so magical that the next day he looked a different man.

An arrangement was made for returning the visit, and he received us in a handsome tent in a garden, with the usual formalities, but only a scribe and the Hakīm were present. A sowar, sent from Burujird with a letter to the Sahib, was undoubtedly robbed of his horse, gun, and some of his clothing en route. Very quietly the Governor denied this, but as he did so I saw a wink pass between the scribe and Hakīm. It was a pitiable sight,—a high official sitting there, with luxuries about him, in a city with its walls, embankments, and gates ruinous, the brickwork in the palace gardens lying in heaps, his province partially disturbed, the people rising against what, at the least, are oppressive exactions, raising an enormous tribute, from which there is no outlay on province or city, government for the good of the governed never entering into his (as rarely into any other Oriental) mind.

This evening he has made a farewell visit on the terrace, attended by the Hakīm. Aziz Khan stood on the edge of the carpet, and occasionally interjected a remark into the conversation. I have before said that he has a certain gentlemanliness and even dignity, and his manner was neither cringing nor familiar. The Hakīm, however, warned him not to speak in presence of the Governor, a restraint which, though very different from the free intercourse of retainers with their chiefs among the Bakhtiari, was in strict accordance with the proprieties of Persian etiquette. Aziz stalked away, shaking his wide shulwars, with an air of contempt. "This governor," he afterwards said, "what is he? If it were Isfandyar Khan, and he were lying down, my head would be next to his, and twenty more men would be lying round him to guard his life with ours."

It seems as if Burujird were destitute of cavalry, at least of men who can be spared, though it has been stated that a whole cavalry regiment is in garrison.[13]

The Governor promised three escorts; my modest request was for one sowar, and a very unmilitary-looking horseman has arrived for me, but now, within an hour of marching, the others are without even one!

Attended by the Hakīm and an escort, we rode yesterday through Burujird. To write that a third of it is in ruins is simply to write that it is a Persian town. It has crumbling mud walls, said to be five miles in circumference, five gates in bad repair, and a ditch, now partially cultivated.

It is situated in Lat. 33° 55′ N, and its Long. is 48° 55′ E. Its elevation is 4375 feet [Bell]. Its population is estimated at from 12,000 to 18,000, and includes a great many Seyyids and mollahs. It has a Persian Telegraph Office and Post Office, neither of them to be depended upon, six large and very many small mosques, a number of mosque schools, thirty-three public baths, and six caravanserais. It manufactures woollen goods, carpets, and the best arak to be found in Persia. It also produces dried fruits and treacle made from grapes.

The bazars are large, light, and well supplied with European goods, Russian and English cottons in enormous quantities, Austrian kerosene lamps of all descriptions and prices, Russian mirrors, framed coloured engravings of the Russian Imperial family, Russian samovars, tea-glasses and tea-trays, Russian sewing and machine cotton, American sewing machines, Russian woollen cloth, fine and heavy, Russian china, and Russian sugar-loaves, to the sale of which several shops are exclusively devoted.

Persian manufactures are chiefly represented by heavy cottons, dyed and stamped at Isfahan, carpets, saddles, horse and mule furniture, copper cooking utensils, shoes of all makes, pipes, kalians, rope, ornamented travelling trunks, galon, gimps, tassels of silk and wool, and "small wares" of all kinds, with rude pottery, oil jars, each big enough to contain a man, great water-jars, small clay bowls glazed roughly with a green glaze, guns, swords, pistols, long knives, and the tools used by the different trades.

Altogether the bazars look very thriving, and they were crowded with buyers. Possibly the people have rarely if ever seen a Feringhi woman, and they crowded very much upon me, and the escort drove them off in the usual fashion, with sticks and stones. Though much of Burujird lies in ruins it has a fair aspect of prosperity and some very good houses and new buildings. The roads are cobbled with great stones, and are certainly not worse than those of the older parts of Tihran. Water is abundant.

Nature evidently intends Burujird to be a prosperous city. The pasturage of the plain is magnificent, and the rich soil produces two crops a year. All cereals flourish. Wheat and barley ripen in July. Seven sorts of grapes grow, and ripen in August and September, and some of the clusters are finer than any of our hothouse produce. Water and musk melons, tobacco, maize, gourds and cucumbers, beans, the bringal or egg plant, peas, flax and other oil seeds, rice and cotton, apricots, walnuts, pomegranates, and peaches testify to the excellence of the soil and climate.

Not only is Burujird in the midst of an exceptionally fine agricultural district, but it is connected by caravan routes with the best agricultural and commercial regions of Persia to the north, east, and west by easy roads, never snow-blocked, or at least they never need be if there were traffic enough to keep them open. It is only 130 miles from rich Kirmanshah, 90 from the fertile district which surrounds Hamadan, 60 from Sultanabad, the most important carpet-producing region of Western Persia, and rich besides in grain and cotton, 140 from Kûm, on the main road from Isfahan to Tihran, something about 230 from Tihran, and only 310 from Ahwaz.

These routes are all easy, though, so far as I know them, very badly supplied with caravanserais, except on the main road between the two capitals. The southern road, leading through Khuramabad to Dizful and Shuster, has no great natural difficulties, though part of it lies through a mountainous region. Some blasting and much boulder-lifting would, according to Colonel Bell, remedy the evils of the fifty miles of it which he regards as bad. But, apart from this, the Shuster-Burujird route, the most natural route for north and south-western Persian commerce to take to and from the sea, is at present useless to trade from its insecurity, as the Feili Lurs, through whose territory it passes, own no authority, live by robbery when they have any one to rob, and are always fighting each other.

There are no regular charvadars in Burujird, and many and tedious have been the difficulties in the way of getting off. Up to last night I had no mules, and Hadji said mournfully, "When you learn what other charvadars are like, you'll think of me." I have taken leave of Aziz Khan with regret. He echoes the oft-repeated question, "Why does not England come and give us peace? In a few years we should all be rich, and not have to fight each other." "Stay among us for some years," he said, "and you will get very rich. What have you to go back to in Feringhistan?" He asked me for a purse, and to put some krans in it for his children, but not to give him any money. He said that when he asked for money and other things he was only in fun. I do not know whether to believe him.

Mirza and my caravan started this morning, and now, 4 p.m., I am leaving with the sowar, with the mercury at 90°, for the first march of a journey of 800 miles.

I. L. B.

LETTER XXII

Hamadan, Aug. 28.

It was as I thought. The sowar sent with me was only a harmless peasant taken from the plough, mounted on his own horse, and provided with a Government gun. The poor fellow showed the "white feather" on the first march, and I was obliged to assert the "ascendency of race" and ride in front of him. The villagers at once set him down as an impostor, and refused him supplies, and as his horse could not keep up with mine, and the road presented no apparent perils, I dismissed him at the end of three days with a largesse which gladdened his heart. He did not know the way, and the afternoon I left Burujird he led me through ploughed fields and along roadless hillsides, till at the end of an hour I found myself close to the garden from which I started.

The early part of the first march is over great bare gravelly slopes without water. Then come irrigation and villages. The hills have been eaten nearly bare. Nothing remains but a yellow salvia and the beautiful Eryngium cæruleum. There, as in the Bakhtiari country, the people stack the Centaurea alata for winter fodder. The road is good, and except in two places a four-wheeled carriage could be driven over it at a trot.

The camping-ground was outside Deswali, an unwalled village of 106 houses, with extensive cultivated lands and a "well-to-do" aspect. The people raise cereals, melons, cucumbers, grapes, and cotton, but in bad seasons have to import wheat. There, as at every village since, the ketchuda has called upon me, and some of these men have been intelligent and communicative, and have shown such courtesies as have been in their power. It is an unusual, if not an unheard-of, thing for a European lady, even if she knows Persian, to travel through this country without a European escort; but there has been no rudeness or impertinent curiosity, no crowding even; the headmen all seemed anxious for my comfort, and supplies at reasonable rates have always been forthcoming.

The heat at Deswali was overpowering, the mercury in my tent standing for hours on 17th August at 120°, the temperature in the shade being 104°.

It is vain to form any resolution against making a pet of a horse. My new acquisition, "Boy," insisted on being petted, and his winning and enticing ways are irresistible. He is always tethered in front of my tent with a rope so long as to give him a considerable amount of liberty, and he took advantage of this the very first day to come into the tent and make it very apparent that he wanted me to divide a melon with him. Grapes were his next penchant, then cucumber, bread, and biscuits. Then he actually drank milk out of a soup plate. He comes up to me and puts his head down to have his ears rubbed, and if I do not attend to him at once, or cease attending to him, he gives me a gentle but admonitory thump. I dine outside the tent, and he is tied to my chair, and waits with wonderful patience for the odds and ends, only occasionally rubbing his soft nose against my face to remind me that he is there. Up to this time a friendly snuffle is the only sound that he has made. He does not know how to fight, or that teeth and heels are of any other use than to eat and walk with. He is really the gentlest and most docile of his race. The point at which he "draws the line" is being led. He drags back, and a mulish look comes into his sweet eyes. But he follows like a dog, and as I walk as much as I can I always have him with me. He comes when I call him, stops when I stop, goes off the road with me when I go in search of flowers, and usually puts his head either on my shoulder or under my arm. To him I am an embodiment of melons, cucumbers, grapes, pears, peaches, biscuits, and sugar, with a good deal of petting and ear-rubbing thrown in. Every day he becomes more of a companion. He walks very fast, gallops easily, never stumbles, can go anywhere, is never tired, and is always hungry. I paid £4:15s. for him, but he was bought from the Bakhtiaris for £3:14s. as a four-year-old. He is "up to" sixteen stone, jumps very well, and is an excellent travelling horse.

Redundant forelocks and wavy manes, uncut tails carried in fiery fashion, small noses, quivering nostrils, small restless ears, and sweet intelligent eyes add wonderfully to the attractiveness of the various points of excellence which attract a horse-fancier in Persia. A Persian horse in good condition may be backed against any horse in the world for weight-carrying powers, endurance, steadiness, and surefootedness, is seldom unsound, and is to his rider a friend as well as a servant. Generally speaking, a horse can carry his rider wherever a mule can carry a load, and will do from thirty to forty miles a day for almost any length of time.

The clothing of horses is an important matter. Even in this hot weather they wear a good deal—first a parhan or shirt of fine wool crossed over the chest; next the jul, a similar garment, but in coarser wool; and at night over all this is put the namad, a piece of felt half an inch thick, so long that it wraps the animal from head to tail, and so deep as to cover his body down to his knees. A broad surcingle of woollen webbing keeps the whole in place.

The food does not vary. It consists of from seven to ten pounds of barley daily, in two feeds, and as much as a horse can eat of kah, which is straw broken in pieces about an inch and a half long. While travelling, barley and kah are mixed in the nose-bag. No hay is given, and there are no oats. It is customary among the rich to give their horses an exclusive diet of barley grass for one month in the spring, on which they grow very fat and useless. Old horses are fed on dough-balls made of barley-flour and water. A grape diet is also given in the grape-producing regions in the autumn instead of kah. Boy eats ten pounds of grapes as a mere dessert.

I admire and like the Persian horse. His beauty is a constant enjoyment, and, ferocious as he is to his fellows, he is gentle and docile to man. I cannot now recall having seen a vicious horse in seven months. On the whole they are very well cared for, and are kindly treated. The sore backs of baggage horses are almost inevitable, quite so, indeed, so long as the present form of pack-saddle stuffed with kah is used. Mares are not ridden in Persia proper.

The march from Deswali to Sahmine is a pretty one, at first over long buff rolling hills and through large elevated villages, then turning off from the Kirmanshah road and descending into a broad plain, the whole of which for several miles is occupied by the trees and gardens of the eminently prosperous village of Sahmine, whose 500 families, though they pay a tribute of 2400 tumans a year, have "nothing to complain of."[14]

I was delighted with the oasis of Sahmine. It has abundant water for irrigation, which means abundant fertility. Its walnut trees are magnificent, and its gardens are filled with noble fruit trees. The wheat harvest was being brought in, and within the walls it was difficult to find a place to camp on, for all the open spaces were threshing-floors, piled with sheaves of wheat and mounds of kah, in the midst of which oxen in spans of two were threshing. That is, they drew machines like heavy wood sleds, with transverse revolving wooden rollers set with iron fans at different angles, which cut the straw to pieces. A great heap of unbound sheaves is in the centre, and from this men throw down the stalked ears till they come up to the bodies of the oxen, adding more as fast as the straw is trodden down. A boy sits on the car and keeps the animals going in a circle hour after hour with a rope and a stick. The foremost oxen are muzzled. The grain falls out during this process.

On a windy day the great heaps are tossed into the air on a fork, the straw is carried for a short distance, and the grain falling to the ground is removed and placed in great clay jars in the living-rooms of the houses. All the villages are now surrounded with mounds of kah which will be stored before snow comes. The dustiness of this winnowing process is indescribable. I was nearly smothered with it in Sahmine, and on windy days each village is enveloped in a yellow dust storm.

Sahmine, though it has many ruinous buildings, has much building going on. It has large houses with balakhanas, a Khan's fort with many houses inside, a square with fine trees and a stream, and a place with a stream, where madder-red dyers were at work, and there are five small mosques and imamzadas. The gardens are quite beautiful, and it is indeed a very attractive village.

The people also were attractive and friendly. After the ketchuda's official visit the Khan's wives called, and pressed me very hospitably to leave my tent and live with them, and when I refused they sent me a dinner of Persian dishes with sweetmeats made by their own hands. The kabobs were quite appetising. They are a favourite Persian dish, made of pieces of seasoned meat roasted on skewers, and served very hot, between flaps of very hot bread. Each bit of meat is rubbed with an onion before being put on the skewer, and a thin slice of tail fat is put between every two pieces. The cooks show great art in the rapidity with which they rotate a skewer full of kabobs over a fierce charcoal fire.

In the evening, at the ketchuda's request, I held a "reception" outside my tent, and it was a very pleasant, merry affair. Several of the people brought their children, and the little things behaved most graciously. It is very pleasant to see the devotion of the men to them. I told them that in England many of our people are so poor that instead of children being welcome they are regarded ruefully as additional "mouths to feed." "Ah," said the ketchuda, a handsome Seyyid, "your land is then indeed under the curse of God. We would like ten children at once, they are the joy of our lives." Other men followed, expatiating on the delights of having children to pet and play with on their return from work.

Sahmine not only dyes and prints cottons, but it exports wheat, barley, opium, cotton, and fruit, and appears a more important and prosperous place than Daulatabad, the capital of the district.

The fine valley between Sahmine and Daulatabad is irrigated by a kanaat and canals, and is completely cultivated, bearing heavy crops of wheat, cotton, tobacco, opium, bringals, and castor oil. The wheat is now being carried to the villages on asses' backs in great nets, lashed to six-foot poles placed in front and behind, each pole being kept steady by a man.

The heat on that march was severe. A heavy heat-haze hung over the distances, vegetation drooped, my mock sowar wrapped up his head in his abba, the horses looked limp, the harvesters slept under the trees, the buffaloes lay down in mud and water. Even the greenery of the extensive gardens in and around Daulatabad scarcely looked cool.

Daulatabad is a walled city of 4500 souls, has a fort, and is reputed to have a large garrison. The bazars, which contain 250 shops, are indifferent, and the five caravanserais wretched. It and its extensive gardens occupy the eastern extremity of a plain, and lie very near the steep rocky mountain Sard Kuh, through which, by the Tang-i-Asnab, the Tihran road passes. Another road over the shoulder of the mountain goes to Isfahan. The plain outside the walls has neither tree nor bush, and was only brought into cultivation two years ago. The harvest was carried, and as irrigation had been suspended for some weeks, there was nothing but a yellow expanse of short thin stubble and blazing gravel.

There was no space for camping in any available garden, and an hour was spent in finding a camping-ground with wholesome water on the burning plain before mentioned. I camped below a terraced and planted eminence, on which a building, half fort and half governor's house, has so recently been erected that it has not had time to become ruinous. It is an imposing quadrangle with blank walls, towers with windows at the corners, and a very large balakhana over the entrance. A winding carriage-drive, well planted, leads up to it, and there is a circular band-stand with a concrete floor and a fountain. The most surprising object was a new pair-horse landau, standing under a tree. Barracks are being built just below the house.

While my tent was being pitched, the Governor's aide-de-camp, attended by a cavalry escort, called, and with much courtesy offered me the balakhana, arranged, he said, in European fashion. The Governor was absent, but this officer said that it would be his wish to offer me hospitality. As I felt quite unable to move he sent a skin of good water, some fruit, and a guard of four soldiers.

It was only 11 a.m. when the tents were pitched, and the long day which followed was barely endurable. The mercury reached 124° inside my tent. The servants lay in a dry ditch under a tree in the Governor's garden. Boy several times came into the shade of my verandah. The black flies swarmed over everything, and at sunset covered the whole roof of the tent so thickly that no part of it could be seen. The sun, a white scintillating ball, blazed from a steely sky, over which no cloud ever passed. The heated atmosphere quivered over the burning earth. I was at last ill of fever, and my recipe for fighting the heat by ceaseless occupation failed. It was a miserable day, and at one time a scorching wind, which seemed hot enough to singe one's hair, added to the discomfort. "As the hireling earnestly desireth the shadow," so I longed for evening, but truly the hours of that day were "long drawn out." The silence was singular. Even the buzzing of a blue-bottle fly would have been cheerful. The sun, reddening the atmosphere as he sank, disappeared in a fiery haze, and then the world of Daulatabad awoke. Parties of Persian gentlemen on fiery horses passed by, dervishes honoured me by asking alms, the Governor's major-domo called to offer sundry kindnesses, and great flocks of sheep and goats, indicated by long lines of dust clouds, moved citywards from the hills. Sand-flies in legions now beset me, and the earth, which had been imbibing heat all day, radiated it far into the morning. I moved my bed outside the tent and gave orders for an early start, but the charvadar who was in the city over-slept himself, and it was eight the next day before I got away, taking Mirza with me.

The heat culminated on that day. Since then, having attained a higher altitude, it has diminished.[15] The road to Jamilabad ascends pretty steadily through undulating country with small valleys among low hills, but with hardly any villages, owing to the paucity of water. The fever still continuing, I found it difficult to bear the movement of the horse, and dismounted two or three times and lay under an umbrella by the roadside. On one of these halts I heard Mirza's voice saying in cheerful tones, "Madam, your horse is gone!" "Gone!" I exclaimed, "I told you always to hold or tether him." "I trusted him," he replied sententiously. "Never trust any one or any horse, and least of all yourself," I replied unadvisedly. I sent him back with his horse to look for Boy, telling him when he saw him to dismount and go towards him with the nose-bag, and that though the horse would approach it and throw up his heels and trot away at first, he would eventually come near enough to be caught. After half an hour he came back without him. I asked him what he had done. He said he saw Boy, rode near him twice, did not dismount, held out to him not the nose-bag with barley but my "courier bag," and that Boy cantered out of sight! For the moment I shared Aziz Khan's contempt for the "desk-bred" man.

Mirza is so good that one cannot be angry with him, but it was very annoying to hear him preach about "fate" and "destiny" while he was allowing his horse to grind my one pair of smoked spectacles into bits under his hoofs. I only told him that it would be time to fall back on fate and destiny when, under any given circumstances, such as these, he had exhausted all the resources of forethought and intelligence. My plight was a sore one, for by that time I was really ill, and had lost, as well as my horse and saddle, my food, quinine, writing materials, and needle-work. I got on the top of the baggage and rode for five hours, twice falling off from exhaustion. The march instead of being thirteen miles turned out twenty-two, there was no water, poor Mirza was so "knocked up" that he stumbled blindly along, and it was just sunset when, after a series of gentle ascents, we reached the village of Jamilabad, prettily situated on the crest of a hill in a narrow valley above a small stream.

To acquaint the ketchuda with my misfortune, and get him to send a capable man in search of the horse, promising a large reward, and to despatch Hassan with a guide in another direction, were the first considerations, and so it fell out that it was 10 p.m. before I was at rest in my tent, where I was obliged to remain for some days, ill of fever. The next morning a gentle thump, a low snuffle, and a theft of some grapes by my bedside announced that Boy was found, and by the headman's messenger, who said he met a Seyyid riding him to Hamadan. The saddle-cloth was missing, and all the things from the holsters, but after the emissary had been arrested for some crime the latter were found in his large pockets. Hassan returned late in the afternoon, having been surrounded by four sowars, who, under the threat of giving him a severe beating, deprived him of his watch.

When I was so far better as to be able to move, I went on to Mongawi, a large walled village at an elevation of 7100 feet, camped for two days on an adjacent slope, and from thence rode to Yalpand by a road on a height on the east side of a very wild valley on the west of which is Elwend, a noble mountain, for long an object of interest on the march from Kirmanshah to Tihran. A great number of the mountains of Persia are ridges or peaks of nearly naked rock, with precipices on which nothing can cling, and with bases small in proportion to their elevation. Others are "monstrous protuberances" of mud and gravel. Mount Elwend, however, has many of the characteristics of a mountain,—a huge base broken up into glens and spurs, among which innumerable villages with their surroundings of woods and crops are scattered, with streams dashing through rifts and lingering among pasture lands, vine-clothed slopes below and tawny grain above, high summits, snow-slashed even now, clouds caught and falling in vivifying showers, indigo colouring in the shadows, and rocky heights for which purple-madder would be the fittest expression.

In one of the loveliest of the valleys on the skirts of Elwend lies the large walled village of Yalpand on a vigorous stream. For two miles before reaching it the rugged road passes through a glen which might be at home, a water-worn ledgy track, over-arched by trees, with steep small fields among them in the fresh green of grass springing up after the hay has been carried. Trees, ruddy with premature autumnal tints and festooned with roses and brambles, bend over the river, of which little is visible but here and there a flash of foam or a sea-green pool. The village, on a height above the stream, has banks of orchards below and miles of grain above, and vineyards, and material plenty of all sorts. It was revelling in the dust storm which winnowing produces, and the ketchuda suggested to me to camp at some distance beyond it, on a small triangular meadow below a large irrigation stream. Hardly were the tents pitched when, nearly without warning, Elwend blackened, clouds gathered round his crest and boiled up out of his corries, and for the first time since the middle of January there were six hours of heavy rain, with hail and thunder, and a fall of the mercury within one hour from 78° to 59°. The coolness was most delicious.

Hadji Hussein's prophecy that after I left him I should "know what charvadars are" was not fulfilled on this journey. I had one young man with me who from having performed the pilgrimage to Kerbela bears the name of "Kerbelai" for the rest of his life. He owns the fine and frisky animals he drives, and goes along at a good pace, his long gun over his shoulder, singing as he goes. Blithe, active, jolly, obliging, honest, kind-hearted, he loads as fast as three ordinary men, and besides grooming and feeding his animals well, he "ran messages," got the water and wood, and helped to pitch and strike the tents, and was as ready to halt as to march. Hassan and Mirza are most deliberate in their movements; nothing can hurry them, not even the risk of being flooded out of their tents; and when the storm came on Kerbelai snatched the spade from them and in no time trenched my tent and dug a channel to let the water out of the meadow.

The next day was cloudless, and the sky, instead of having a whitish or steely blue, had the deep pure tint so often seen on a June day in England. The heat returned, and it was a fatiguing and dusty march into Hamadan, still mainly on the skirts of Elwend, among villages surrounded by vineyards. After pursuing a by-road from Jamilabad I joined the main road, two miles from Hamadan, and the number of men on good horses, of foot passengers, and of asses laden with fruit and vegetables, indicated the approach to a capital as plainly as the wide road, trenched on both sides and planted with young willows.