As the weather got warmer we began morning rides; we used to start regularly at six A.M. Pierson kindly gave me a hint occasionally, and we had some very enjoyable canters about Hamadan, the environs of which are very pretty and full of foliage; in this other Persian towns are generally rather deficient. We usually managed to get in before the sun got too high, had a second tub, and dressed for breakfast.

I engaged three servants, Abdul-Mahomed, personal or head-servant; Abdullah, a groom-boy; and Ramazan, as sweeper and dispensary attendant.

As the staff under my official charge was very small, and they were unmarried healthy men, my Government work was very trifling; but a constant crowd at the door, desirous of seeing the new Hakim,[9] made me anxious to take the advice given me while in Teheran, and make the most of my opportunities ere the novelty had worn off. I gave out, then, that I was prepared to see patients from eleven A.M., and a courtyard that we did not use in any way, (it was originally the women’s quarter of our house,) was kindly placed at my disposal by Pierson, who also gave me the advantage of his knowledge of Persian as an interpreter.

I saw my servant was very busy indeed, and that all the morning a file of people were flocking into the courtyard, in which I had installed my dispensary. Precisely at eleven I proceeded to seat myself; what was my astonishment to find some two hundred people sitting in groups, my two servants vainly endeavouring to keep some sort of order; the noise was great, and practical joking and laughter were in the ascendant.

Pierson’s presence, however, awed the rioters, and silence was after a time obtained, some few of the more noisy among the males being ejected.

I soon found that many of the so-called patients had merely come from curiosity, while others had old injuries to complain of, and did not expect medicines, but miracles.

The replies to the question, “What is the matter?” were sometimes highly ridiculous, one man informing me that he had a serpent in his inside, while another complained of being bewitched.

Among the ladies, Pierson, who bravely stuck to his self-imposed duty of interpreter, informed me that the principal request was for aphrodisiacs, drugs to increase embonpoint, and cosmetics; while many women of apparently great age were urgent for physic for improving their appearance. Many cases of eye-disease presented themselves, and not a few of surgical injury, which had been treated only in the most primitive manner. It was only by four in the afternoon that I succeeded in getting rid of the rabble-rout that had come to my dispensary.

Rome was not built in a day. As the novelty wore off and the sightseers ceased to come, the sick, who generally amounted to from two hundred to two hundred and fifty a day, more or less, became more tractable, and my servants better able to manage them.

I made stringent rules as to seeing all in the order of their coming, and separating the men from the women. Although I saw many thousands of patients in Hamadan, yet I found that I made no appreciable addition to my income; those who could pay, didn’t; and the only grist that came to the mill my two men absorbed. These now bloomed out in silken raiment, and my head-man, whose pay was twelve pounds a year, and clothe and feed himself, actually kept a servant of his own, and adopted a slow and dignified pace, which, as he day by day increased in wealth, became more and more apparent.

I, after some weeks, on some provocation or other, determined to discharge Ramazan, who immediately told me, with many protestations, that on account of the great love he bore me he could not leave me, and was desirous to stay at half-wages. On my remaining obdurate he wished to stop on nothing a month and “find himself.” He begged so hard that I couldn’t turn him out, and forgave him. The fact was, that his pickings from the daily crowd of patients was some ten times as much as his pay.

Often have I been asked by Persian acquaintances, “What is your pay?” “Little enough,” I reply. “Ah, but what is your modakel?” i. e. pickings and stealings.

This system of modakel it is useless to fight against. The Persians, from the king downwards, speak of “my modakel.” The governor of a province buys his appointment: this is the king’s modakel; he farms the taxes for one hundred thousand tomans, and sells them for half as much again; this is his modakel; the buyer exacts two hundred thousand, the difference is his modakel.

I buy a horse, a carpet, or a pound of sugar, ten per cent. is added by my servant to my bill. I sell a horse, and ten per cent. is taken on the price by my servant. I pay a muleteer, and ten per cent. is deducted from the hire. These things are the so-called legitimate “modakel” of my servant, and I cannot avoid it. If pressed, or the thing is brought home to him, he will not even hesitate to acknowledge it.

“It is the custom, sahib. Could you have bought the thing cheaper than I, or sold it so well, even with the modakel? No, you could not; then why object? What stimulates me to do the best I can for you? My modakel; you cannot fight against it.” And he is right; the ten per cent. is extracted from all, Europeans or Persians; and it is no use to kick against the pricks. But more than this is considered robbery (if detected).[10]

In the last five years of my life in Persia I kept all these servants mentioned in the note, with the exception of a nazir, who is, as a rule, a purely useless man, and only an increaser of his master’s expenses for the sake of the addition to his own profits. Thus my cook, through whose hands the whole expenses, eight hundred kerans a month, or at times a thousand, used to pass, made, say, ninety kerans as his percentage; out of the sums paid for shoeing and repairs and sale of manure (a valuable perquisite), the grooms made theirs; while for every penny expended by my servant a percentage was taken in money or goods.

Even the laundress would take (not steal) a tenth or more of the soap given her. But then it was no use fighting against it, for it was not etiquette for the better-class European to be seen in the bazaar, save for special things, as curios, and such a proceeding would entail a great loss of consideration, and cause him to be classed as a “mean white.”

Again, one’s head-servant, though he took this percentage, made it a point of honour to do his best for you after that had been deducted, and no one else but himself was permitted to rob on a large scale.

I have struggled against the system repeatedly. I have even caused muleteers to be paid in my presence, and have given them a present for civility, and have then ordered the men off the premises, not allowing my servants to leave the house; or I have paid by cheque on a native banker; but I am sure the servants got their commission, and shared it in certain proportions arranged among themselves.

Another source of revenue to servants is the system of vails. This is, I am glad to say, being lessened. At one time the Europeans encouraged it. I remember, after I had been about a year in the country, going to stay with Pierson in Teheran, on a visit of five weeks: I gave his head-servant to distribute amongst the rest two hundred and fifty kerans, or ten pounds. The man’s face did not express a lively satisfaction, though that was merely policy; and as I was riding out of the gate, the “dog-boy,” a youth retained to feed the five or six dogs my friend kept, seized my bridle, and asked me roughly, “Where was his present?” This was more than mortal man could stand; I thonged the fellow, going back afterwards to explain and apologise to his master, who turned him out then and there.

Thus a servant, though he nominally feeds and clothes himself, has his wages, his profits, his presents which each servant gets from his master at the New Year—generally a month’s pay—his vails, and his master’s old clothes; as these fetch a high price in a bazaar, they are an important item in the servant’s budget. In addition to this, he gets a small allowance when travelling, and on the road his master feeds him. So that, taken altogether, his position is not a bad one, the emoluments of my head-man, for instance, being more than those of a native country doctor in fair practice.

I felt considerable satisfaction at this time at the visits to my dispensary of the “hakim bashi” (chief doctor), or rather one of those who had that title in Hamadan. He expressed himself as eager to learn, and knew a few words of French. I was, of course, delighted to give him any information I could, and he seemed very grateful for instruction; he, however, turned out afterwards to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and was very nearly the cause of my stay in Persia being brought to an abrupt termination, a matter which will be duly detailed.

One day one of the servants brought a “delleh”[11] for sale, a sort of weasel, and of similar size; he was of an olive-green colour, with a bushy tail, having patches of yellowish-white on the body: a boy dragged him in by a string. He was so fierce no one would go near him, and was evidently carnivorous.

He was kept on our platform tied to a ring, till one day he gnawed his thong and bolted into a hole. In this hole he remained, just showing his nose in the daytime, but coming out at night, when he was generally pursued by our dogs, who roamed about the place loose.

I had been in the habit of feeding the beast on raw meat, of which he was immoderately fond, and after some little trouble I taught him to come to call. The animal got very tame, though extremely pugnacious when teased, bristling his long soft fur out, like the mongoose, biting savagely, and emitting a short sharp cry of rage.

He used to beg for his food, sit in our hands, allow himself to be stroked, and became a great pet with both of us; but, as he showed a great disinclination to be tied up, we allowed him to live in his hole in the wall. As he grew fat from good living, he discontinued his nocturnal excursions, presenting himself at meals with great regularity; his intelligence was great, and the servants, who hated him, and looked on him as “nejis,” or unclean, kept carefully out of his way; as did the dogs, most of whom had been bitten severely, and the suddenness of his movements and the sharpness of his cries terrified them.

The beast, too, had another mode of defending himself, which I am glad to say he only resorted to once when hard pressed. Two of the dogs had got him in a corner, when suddenly they both bolted, and the delleh made for his hole in a dignified manner. He had employed the mode of defence used by the skunk, and the particular corner of the courtyard, and the two dogs and the delleh were unapproachable for a fortnight.

However, the animal had no stronger odour than any other carnivorous beast, save on this occasion, and it probably was his only means of safety. After he had inhabited his hole some months, while he was gambolling on our platform, I saw the head of a second delleh cautiously protruded and rapidly withdrawn. He had been joined by a female, and after a week or two, she too became quite tame. Like the ferret and mongoose, these animals waged war against whatever had life, hunting fowls, etc., with the peculiarly stealthy gait so well known.

I noticed now that a considerable number of my patients, and Persian acquaintances, and all the servants, were continually pestering me for quinine. The reason was that the high price of this drug, pure as I had it, was a temptation, and as each impostor got a small quantity, my store sensibly diminished.

I was loath to stop distributing the drug altogether, as I had been particularly instructed that the giving away of quinine to the sick was beneficial, indirectly, to the good feeling which we desired to produce towards the English in Persia.

However, I made a rule only to give away the drug in solution, or, in the case of servants of our own, in the dry state in the mouth.

This had the desired effect, and as a rule one dose of the bitter drug caused the most grasping of the domestics to hesitate before applying for a second. This system I adopted during the whole time I was in the country, only giving the crystals to the European staff, and the quinine being distributed each year in ounces, where before it had been pounds. In fact, I did away with one of the sources of legitimate (?) modakel of the servants, who had traded on my innocence and simulated fever (intermittent) to obtain what was such very “portable property.”

One morning, while we were at breakfast under the “talar,” we saw a European enter the compound, and a little scene ensued that was sufficiently amusing. I must premise that in those early days of the Persian Telegraph Department, when communication was infrequent, owing to the continual destruction of the line, orders could only be conveyed by letters, which often never reached their destination.

The unknown sahib, without announcing himself, or asking if the superintendent were visible, stalked up on to the platform and thrust a paper into Pierson’s hand. On it was an order to Mr. P— to proceed to Hamadan and take charge of the office there. And he (Mr. P—) had that moment alighted from his horse, having marched some twelve stages from Ispahan.

Pierson took the paper, read it, and said, “Well?”

The stranger replied, “I’m P—.”

“Have you nothing else to say?” said Pierson.

“No; I’ve come to take charge of the office here.”

Pierson now called for ink, and wrote “Mr. P— will proceed at once to Shiraz, and take charge of the office there,” and signed it.

“You need not discharge your mules, and will start to-morrow. Good morning to you.”

Mr. P— was equal to the occasion; he walked out of the place without a word, and he did start the next day (on his march of sixteen stages).

So much for discipline.

Pierson, who played the concertina, cornet, and piano, suggested to me as a pastime that he should teach me the cornet. To this I assented; and the first thing was to learn to blow. This is not so easy as it seems, and as the noises I produced were not pleasant, Pierson only allowed my practising in the house when he was not at home. The flat roof at sunset was my place to practise, and here I blew to my heart’s content. I only blew one note of various loudness, and to my astonishment found I had a rival, whose lungs were stronger than mine; he, too, blew one note in rapid succession. I blew—he blew—but his were decidedly the stronger sounds, and he blew longer. I kept up my blowing, but soon came down, feeling my inferiority.

The next night I was alone, my rival absent. I blew my one note in rapid succession till I could blow no more. Suddenly I heard cries, and sounds of beating, and shouts of men and women—a row evidently. I blew on.

Next morning the British Agent, Syud Houssein (these native agents are appointed by the English Legation in lieu of consuls throughout Persia at the great cities; they are really news-writers, but act as consuls, and look after English interests), came to Pierson, with a long face, saying that a complaint had been made to him by the Governor, of the conduct of the sahibs in his (Pierson’s) house.

It appears that when the bath is full of men, and the time allotted to them expires, the bath is cleared, and the bath-man, on its being empty, blows on a buffalo horn for a few minutes a succession of notes. This is the signal to the expectant women, and so on, when the time for the ladies expires, for the men. The bath-man was my unknown rival.

The day before, the bath being full of women, I proceeded to our roof to indulge in cornet practice. My efforts, alas! were so like the solos of the bath-man, that the Hamadan men of our quarter rushed to, and into the sacred precincts of, the bath. The women who were inside were furious at the unexpected intrusion, and called on their male relatives for protection. A fight ensued, which only ceased on both parties uniting to give the innocent bath-man a sound thrashing; which having thoroughly accomplished to their satisfaction, and broken his buffalo horn, they retired, hinc illæ lachrymæ. The matter was soon explained, and a small present consoled the beaten bath-man, and I gave up the cornet.

Syud Houssein was a dignified little man, with the dark complexion and scanty black beard that is supposed to characterise the true descendants of the prophet. I fancy myself that while his duties consisted merely in looking after the few Persians who were British subjects in Hamadan, and writing a monthly news-letter to the Legation at Teheran, he was quite happy; but that the actual presence of the unbeliever in the city itself was not very palatable to him. However, we ever found him kind and courteous, though he avoided breaking bread with us, save in secret and when there was no escape.

There are a great many Armenians in Hamadan, and there are villages in the immediate neighbourhood of the place inhabited only by them. They have mostly adopted the Persian dress and language, Armenian being in disuse as a language among those living in Hamadan, and there being no distinctive mark by which one can tell them in either indoor or outdoor dress; unlike the Armenian of Teheran, who adopts the dress of those of his nation who are Russian subjects, or the Julfa (Ispahan) Armenians, who affect the fez to simulate the Turkish subject, or at times pretend an ignorance of Persian, and disguise themselves as sahibs. A ludicrous instance of this occurred once when I was coming into Shiraz chupparee. In the distance I saw under some trees, by a running brook, where generally travellers from Shiraz bid their friends farewell, what appeared to me an officer in the full-dress uniform of the English (?) army. I was intrigued, and as the trees were off the road I cantered up to the group.

I found one of our Armenian signallers in an engineer officer’s full-dress scarlet mess jacket, jack-boots, a full-dress uniform cap, lambswool drawers (sewn up in front) to simulate buckskins, a huge cavalry sabre, and three revolvers. The fact was that he had assumed what he supposed to be the correct get-up of an English officer of rank, in order that if any highway robbers met him (the country was very disturbed at the time) on his seven days’ march to Abadeh, they might refrain from attacking him. He arrived safely. Unfortunately these assumptions of the appearance of the European by Armenians does not add to the respect which the real sahib receives.

Some of the tales these people tell to increase their own importance in the eyes of their oppressors, the Persians, are ingenious and amusing. When I was living in Julfa, an Armenian village close to Ispahan, which had been for divers reasons made the headquarters of the Persian Telegraph Department in that place, I was called upon by a great personage, the farmer of the taxes, a Persian, one Rahim Khan.

After the usual compliments, he remarked, in conversation, that “I must be very glad to live in so holy a place as Julfa. Full, too, of churches.”

I demurred.

“But amidst your co-religionists, men whom you so much revere.”

This was too much. I told him that “we could not respect the Armenians, but that we pitied them for the many years of oppression they had undergone, which probably had brought out the bad points in their characters.”

He would not be denied. “But you revere them?” he persisted.

“Quite the contrary.”

He burst into a laugh. “Ah! dogs, and sons of dogs as they are,” he replied; “only the other day one of them told me, on my congratulating him on the presence of their protectors, the English—for you know, sahib, before the Feringhis came, they were as are now the Jews—that they were not complimented, but rather the Europeans; for, said the dog, ‘we are to them what your Syuds (descendants of the prophet) are to you, noble sir’—in fact, holy men.”

This anecdote is characteristic of the Armenian.

The Hamadan Armenian is brighter and more civilised than his Ispahan confrère, his frequent journeyings to Russia having sharpened him, while, there being only two priests in the place, he is not bigoted. He has adopted the manners and dress of the Persian, also his language, and is so far less exposed to annoyance by the reigning people; in fact, in Hamadan he is not looked on or treated as an outcast; while in Julfa the national dress, specially apparent in the female attire, the national language, and their ignorance and lack of politeness, make them a people apart.

The gist of the matter is, that in Hamadan and its environs, the Armenian is simply a Persian, not a Mahommedan; while in Julfa he is an Armenian of the Armenians; “and the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.”

As to the Jews, their position is terrible. Probably in no country in the world are they treated worse than in Persia. Beaten, despised, and oppressed, cursed even by slaves and children, they yet manage to exist, earning their living as musicians, dancers, singers, jewellers, silver- and gold-smiths, midwives, makers and sellers of wine and spirits. When anything very filthy is to be done a Jew is sent for.