At Julfa, on the Araxes—a muddy stream, when we were there, easily fordable—is the Persian frontier, and here our horse-journey was to begin. The tarantass was sold a bargain to the postmaster. A change of clothes and boots and a few flannel shirts were stuffed in the “koorjins,” or saddle-bags, made of rough carpet; boots were greased and put on, so were spurs; and I, in my innocence, at the instigation of the saddler, who I suppose wished to get rid of them, had provided myself with a pair of huge long brass ones, such as were worn by the barons of melodrama, and palmed off on me as real Mexican persuaders adapted for long journeys—these awful things the Colonel suggested I should do without, but I did not like to be shorn of any of my splendour, and I wore them. At first I spurred myself considerably when walking, but I got over this, and no doubt they added to the picturesqueness of my get-up. Fur-cap, “horsey” box-cloth pilot-jacket, with big horn buttons, cords and boots, also a huge courier’s whip and fur gloves, made, to my youthful mind, a striking picture, and I greatly appreciated myself.

At Tiflis we had provided ourselves with bags, some seven feet long and four feet wide—these bags were to be filled with chaff, of which there is an abundance, at each station. It is called “kah,” and is the ordinary horse-feed, some of it being always in the manger; at this the Persian horse persistently munches; when he has had a bellyful of it he gets his morning or evening feed—never before. This rather primitive mattress is soft, cool in summer, warm in winter, free from insects, and there is no bed to carry.

We each carried a small washing-basin of brass; we had also a teapot and two tin plates. I had a wonderful expanding cup which I used to fill with wine, but, before I had time to drink, it generally collapsed, so I soon flung it away. We carried a few packets of candles; and, having our chaff-bags filled, we retired early, to begin on the morrow our first day’s posting. To my companion, an old traveller, this was nothing, but I looked forward to it with mixed feelings of delight and awe.

Apparently in the dead of night—really at dawn—I saw the Colonel dressed and busy; I hurried on my clothes, bundled my few odds and ends into my saddle-bags, rolled up my rugs into a cylinder, with the waterproof one outside, swallowed as many cups of hot tea as I could hold (it was terribly cold), reluctantly put my long brass spurs away—the Colonel told me I should only find them in my way—and dragged my various impedimenta into the yard.

The fact was that, with our heavy baggage, which quite loaded one of the horses, which was to be led, we were unable to take more than one servant. To be without one when posting in Persia is extremely inconvenient. Of course, if speed is a great object, a man gets along much faster without a servant, but then he has to do everything for himself, and to know how to do it.

After some three-quarters of an hour we managed to get the baggage-horse loaded with two portmanteaux, and our own beasts saddled; the koorjins, or saddle-bags, put on across the loins of the horses, and firmly secured by a strap passing from the bottom of each bag to the girths. This is most important to prevent the shaking up together of everything the saddle-bags may contain.

My “Dayrell” bridle was fitted with a common watering bit, and as the horses of Persia are accustomed to a very severe native machine, my melancholy animal, as soon as he had been lashed into a canter, bolted, and was only brought to a stop by his coming down on his nose, which he did after some quarter of a mile. Of course, with such a bit, it was quite impossible to pull him up. As usual, though we fell with a crash, no one was hurt. I struggled to my feet, but the pony lay quite still, as if injured, till the “shargird chupper,” or horse-boy, on his arrival, by a few vigorous kicks caused him to get up and shake himself. The Colonel now advised me to take the native bridle used by the shargird, and with this, of course, I could easily command my pony.

Several times we had to stop to arrange the load of the pack-horse, and also to alter the contents of our saddle-bags. These should be so packed as to be of nearly exactly equal weight, as when they are not so they gradually slip round, and one’s horse stops; when one finds one bag under his belly, the other on his crupper.

The ordinary chuppering kit of saddle, rugs, and bags is well suited for this kind of travelling, but we had besides a led horse, a tin cocked-hat case, a leather hat-box, and a sword and umbrella of the Colonel’s. Our shargird, after many attempts to manage differently, fixed the tin cocked-hat case to his saddle, en croupe, tied the leather hat-box on as a knapsack behind his shoulders, and carried the sword under the surcingle of his saddle.

We kept on at a smart canter, only stopping to fix or shift the loads of the various animals. As soon as we were a mile or two from the station the shargird ceased to lead the baggage-horse; he had been compelled to do so till then, as he would have turned back.

The cantering through the cold air was exhilarating; and now I had time to look at the country—Persia at last!—which I was to inhabit for three years certain. I found that the road, if such it could be called, simply consisted of a number of tracks across country, which ran along irregularly side by side, formed by the wear of strings of mules and camels; there was no road in our sense of the term; in fact, the judicious thing seemed to be to go as straight ahead as one could, avoiding bad bits by a curve, and keeping to the most worn portion of the track, unless it was deep in mud or water. The ponies did not require much urging, and I found it expedient to keep my big chupper whip quiet, till I had learnt how to use it with ease and effect.

This whip is provided with a short stick of hard and heavy wood, covered with leather, and having a big loop of the same, that it may hang at the wrist when not in use.

The lash is a round one of four thongs of Hamadan leather plaited, and is from four to seven feet long; when the latter, it is reduced in actual length to about three and a half feet by plaiting the lash from the stick downwards for about two feet; it ends in a knot, and beyond this are two flat pieces of leather some six inches long, which the expert keeps flicking under the horse’s nose; thus, without hurting the horse or tiring himself, letting him be aware of the punishment in store for the lazy being at hand.

The stages are from three to eight farsakhs in length, a farsakh being in the rough three and a half miles; they vary in different parts of the country, and are especially long between Teheran and Hamadan, some of the seven-farsakh stages being, in the opinion of those who have been often over them, thirty miles and more.

The average stage is, however, five farsakhs, and from one large city to another, as Tabriz to Teheran, Teheran to Ispahan, or Ispahan to Shiraz, this reckoning holds good. As a rule, a very short stage has a very bad road, a very long one a good one; but this is not invariable. The first and last stage of a long journey, too, is as a rule a very short one, as Persians like, in marching, to have the first stage a short one, that omissions may be replaced before definitely starting, and the caravan got together well outside the town. The last stage being a short one enables friends to receive them, makes it easier to put on good clothes and to brush up after the journey—in fact, to arrive in a presentable condition.

All around us were earth-hills, with quantities of loose stones on them; here and there patches of snow; in the distance, in every direction, we were surrounded by snow-covered mountains; but the sky was blue and cloudless, the air was pure and dry. As it got warmer and warmer we felt a sense of freedom, and that a change for the better had been made from the noisy and stifling tarantass.

Our guide now began to shout “Yawash!” (gently), and “Nuffus! nuffus!” (breath), and the Colonel intimated to me that we must walk our animals to give them their second wind. This we did, and we jogged along easily till within some six miles of the post-house. Then the guide rushed to the front, the ponies did their best, and it appeared the correct thing to get them along as fast as possible. The fact was that we had very good horses, so that as we cantered up to the post-house, having done our stage of six farsakhs (twenty-one miles) in three hours, we felt that the Colonel, being burdened with a greenhorn and a lot of extra luggage, had not done badly.

And now I thought that I had fairly earned a rest and something to eat. I was hungry and rather tired, for, being determined to get no cropper, unless my beast came down as well, I had used my knees too much. Your experienced chupper merely rides by balance, to avoid tiring himself. What, then, was my disgust at seeing the Colonel order out more horses at once, and to see him set to to help with the saddling. I groaned in the spirit, and did the same; though it was with some doubt that I agreed to the proposition that “it was very lucky we got horses, and could get on at once.”

The Colonel explained to me that, in travelling “chupper” (or post), it was incumbent on the traveller never to stop during the day, at least when he could get horses. This is doubtless a safe rule, but a corollary should be added that, unless the country is very safe indeed, it is as well, unless very urgent, not to go on after sunset. To a neglect of this latter rule I must put down my falling into the hands of robbers during the famine.

I now found out what it was to get a really rough and bad horse; this beast’s only pace was a hard trot, and the amount of shaking was tremendous. The road was much as before, and the going was fairly good. On reaching the next stage I was heartily glad to find there were no horses, which gave us time to get some tea, and a breakfast of hard eggs and harder biscuits. It was two ere we could make a start, and I did not forget to change my steed, and profited considerably; but the shaking had been severe, and I felt very stiff and tired. I was, however, ashamed to say so, and I chimed in with my companion in his praises of the delights of posting, and the glorious freedom of travel in the East.

Though the Colonel was a good Persian scholar, he could not make much of the guides and post-house keepers, who are all Turks; and very few of them speak Persian, Turkish being the language of the country. It is not till some four stages past Tabriz that Persian is the dialect of the peasant.

The reigning family, too, affect to think and speak in Turkish with their relatives and families; but it is not the Turkish of Constantinople, but the rougher speech of Tabriz, the cause being probably that at some period of their early life they have resided at Tabriz, where nothing else but Turkish is spoken; of course, it is also their ancestral tongue.

We got safely to our third post-house, at half-past three, got fresh horses, and started. The warmth of the last two stages had ceased, and patches of snow were getting more frequent; but I felt, though sorely against the grain, that as long as the Colonel would go on I ought not to object, under penalty of being thought a muff. Our steeds were bad; we couldn’t get more than a walk out of them, and we were six hours doing the stage, which we reached chilled to the bone. I was indeed delighted to hear from the Colonel that “it was hardly worth while pushing on!” and as I scrambled into the bare and blackened room which the postmaster allotted to us, and busied myself in getting a light, I was grateful that even the Colonel’s ideas of duty were satisfied. Of course, afterwards, such a day’s posting came to be looked on as a joke; but sixty-eight miles, over bad roads, to a man not accustomed to the saddle, is a serious matter.

Our first care was to get the postmaster, a poor ragged fellow, to light a fire of brushwood; a fierce blaze that thoroughly warmed the room, and at the same time filled the place with smoke, was the result. Then he bethought him that the chimney was stopped up with a brick; the brick was removed, and more brushwood put on. Then he gave us a carpet on loan, brought some firewood and the scales to weigh it; the weights were big stones, the scales two baskets slung on a stick.

There were recesses some yard from the ground all round the room, which was some eight feet by twelve. The floor was earth, the walls mud, the roof big poles with branches of trees laid across them. In the recesses we stuck three candles. The walls and roof were polished black from the smoke of many fires. In the part of the room near the door were flung our saddles and luggage. No furniture of any kind; we got the bullock-trunk forward to use as a table.

The shargird chupper brought our chaff-bags filled, and laid one on either side of the fireplace as a mattress; we laid our rugs, and put our saddle-bags for pillows. We made a big fire, borrowed a kettle, got some strong tea under weigh, enjoyed a dinner of cold fowl and biscuit; barricaded our door, which seemed merely three planks nailed together, and lay down to sleep like tops. The naib, or postmaster, replaced the brick, and the ashes of our fire were alight in the morning. I never enjoyed a night’s rest so much. But at 5 A.M. there was the Colonel with the tea under weigh, and adjuring me to rise.

Up I got, gobbled down some hot tea, and we started in the snow at six, for it had come down heavily in the night.

Ah, it was cold! and hardly light, the horses trying to turn back as we followed at a snail’s pace the shargird, who seemed not to know much of the road. In a few minutes I was sitting on alternate hands in a vain attempt to keep them warm. We had fortunately taken the precaution to put on big Turkish wool socks over our boots, and this kept our feet from freezing, for the cold stirrup-iron soon, in such weather, extracts any warmth from the feet.

At last the light came, and we could see the village and post-house, some half-mile off, after an hour’s wandering; but we were on the road, which was something. And now that we could see to go, and the shargird was sure of the way, off we went at the usual pace, a smart gallop. Nine o’clock brought us to the next stage—five farsakhs.

We reached Meana, at which there is a fine new post-house, at about five, but we had arranged that, unless we were compelled to sleep at this place, we would avoid it, as the celebrated so-called bug of Meana is found here. During the whole time I have resided in Persia I never could find any one who had suffered any ill effects from the bite of the “Meana bug” at all in proportion to the horrors narrated; and I must look on the description given by travellers as apocryphal: Eastwick dilates on it. The kenneh, or camel-tic, certainly causes a particularly irritating wound, which will be found fully described further on. But the “Meana bug,” I am inclined to think, is nothing more than an ordinary camel- or perhaps sheep-tic, and by no means dangerous to life (pace Eastwick). But we both at that time were inclined to believe that there was something in the terrible accounts given of the insect, and so we avoided Meana. As it was we made a very great mistake; Meana, having at that time a brand-new post-house, was quite safe; but as we pushed on darkness caught us, and we did not arrive till nearly ten at night at Turcomanchai. Here was an old caravanserai only to put up in; the post-house was in ruins. And on the Colonel asking the postmaster if he had many insects he shrugged his shoulders in a significant manner.

We found a French merchant, with a big box of valuables, in the blackened cell of the doorway appropriated to posting travellers. He was marching, but had taken the room as the only water- and wind-tight one, and he welcomed us to a share of it and his big fire. It was very cold outside, and we were glad to get to the grateful warmth and partake of a cup of tea. But we had not been in the place half an hour when we found that it was literally alive. We couldn’t go on, and there was no other place to go to.

I throw a veil over our sufferings. How we regretted the clean new post-house at Meana, and how glad we were to leave Turcomanchai[2] at the earliest break of dawn! The insects, however, were merely fleas, B flats, and those nameless to ears polite.

There was little or no snow on the road as we started, but it was sufficiently cold; the roads were hard, good, but full of loose stones.

Such was the journey—each day a repetition of that before it, varied only in weather.

February 12, after going 480 miles chupper, we were met about twenty miles from Teheran by Major S—, the director of the Persian telegraph department, Mr. B—, my medical chief, and Messrs. T— and M—, secretaries of the English Legation, all friends of Colonel G—’s.

They escorted us to a place called Kerrij, a palace of the Shah’s, gave us a sumptuous dinner, and we lay down to sleep in huge rooms gay with paint, gilding, and coloured glass. A mighty brew of egg-flip prevented a wakeful night; and the next morning we rode over a muddy plain to Major S—’s house in Teheran, which was to be my home till I started for “down country.”