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THE Land of the Lion and the Sun lies off the beaten track. Travelers who, like Puck, are concerned for time when putting their girdle round the world, hold Persia hardly worth the long détour from the Red Sea highway and the reversion to primitive methods of progress.

The shortest and easiest approach to Teheran is the overland route through Russia to Baku, the centre of the oil region on the west shore of the Caspian. The monotony of this long railroad journey may be broken, however, by leaving the railway at Vladikavkas, taking a carriage through the magnificent scenery of the Darial Pass to Tiflis, and proceeding thence by the Caucasus line to its eastern terminus at Baku. Or we may avoid European Russia altogether by sailing on one of the Russian steamers from Constantinople through the Bosphorus and Black Sea to Batoum, which is the western extremity of the Caucasus railroad. This route affords glimpses of the Asia Minor coast,—at whose cities of Ineboli,

Samsun, and Trebizond, the steamer touches; some distant but rather disappointing views of the snow-topped Caucasus range as the train skirts its southern flank; and for the traveler whose enjoyment depends upon recollections of the past as well as visions of the present, there will be memories of the Argonauts and the Golden Fleece, and the Retreat of the Ten Thousand.

The Caucasus route is absolutely free from all danger except as we happen upon such stormy times as recently made the streets of Tiflis and Baku to run with the blood of warring races. Peopled as is the Caucasus with fragments of nations, of semi-nomadic habits and widely differing origins and beliefs, which have wrestled for centuries in bloody conflict, any such relaxing of the governing hand as accompanied the recent Russian disasters in the Far East naturally resulted in an outburst of the underlying race hatreds. But the single governing hand is there, as it is not in the Balkan peninsula,

and, so far as the semi-Oriental administration of Russia means pacification, the Caucasus may be said to be pacified.

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Tiflis, a generally well-ordered city, whose museum contains a complete collection illustrative of the ethnology, archæology, and natural history of the region, may well detain the traveler. The West and the East meet here in sharp contrast, meet, without mingling. From the broad streets and open squares of the Russian quarter, in whose modern opera house I heard Rubenstein's Demonio worthily given, one passes without transition to the narrow passageways and crowded bazaars of the old city where Persian, Georgian, and Armenian, Turk, Kurd, and Tartar jostle each other in endless variety of costume and tongue. Except for its oil wells, which have filled the city with a restless population of adventurers and speculators, Baku contains little of interest. Less Eastern and more commercial than Tiflis, its pretensions to civilization are more offensive than barbarism itself. All genuine civilization, especially of the sanitary kind, is left behind at Tiflis, and it was in the so-called Grand Hotel of Baku, under conditions impossible of description, that I began to devise ways and means for getting my wife into Persia without too great a shock to her sensibilities. So much worse than pure nature is half civilization.

Once at Baku by any one of these three approaches, we proceed by steamer down the Caspian Sea, to the Persian port of Enzeli at its southern extremity.

The seasoned or more adventuresome traveler may discard the Caspian route altogether, either leaving the steamer on the Black Sea at Trebizond, to follow the old caravan route over which the riches of the East once found their outlet to Europe, or the Caucasus railway at Tiflis for the branch line terminating at Erivan under the shadow of Ararat. The long journey from Trebizond, as also that from Erivan, must be made in the saddle and has the Persian city of Tabriz as ter

minus. Tabriz in the west, Teheran in the centre, and Meshed in the east, form the three northern city gates of Persia; but only the traveler who crosses the Caspian to visit Khiva, Bokara, and Samarkand, would enter by the Meshed gateway.

Steadily pushing the development of her railway system and the construction of her military roads south of the Caucasus and trans-Caspian lines toward the Persian frontier, Russia is systematically tightening her hold on the northern provinces. Nothing comparable with the energy, intelligence, and military genius which foiled her plans in Manchuria bars her way to northern Persia, where there is neither patriotism, as we understand it, nor any desire or capacity to assimilate western ideas adequate to loosen the grip of its colossal neighbor. There is a creed- but creeds have never checked the advance of Russia.

While the traveler may enter Persia by various routes, he can do so in only one frame of mind. He must rid himself of all memories of Lalla Rookh, rose gardens, nightingales, and houris. He must be able to find compensation for the loss of the ordinary comforts of life in his love of freedom and wide horizons. He must often be content with the shadow of a great rock in a weary land, and able at all times to rejoice in his nearness to nature, animate and inanimate. If he is dependent upon the factitious, or is of the temper of one whom I heard lamenting that there was no Ritz in Toledo, it were better not to invade the kingdom of the Shah. But if he loves the early start at sunrise, when horses are saddled and packs strapped, if the rushing waters at the ford are music to his ears, if he can forget the limbs stiff with yesterday's fatigues in the glorious views from the passes of the mountain ranges which traverse the Iranian plateau like the teeth of gigantic saws, and welcome at nightfall as a haven of rest the crowded caravanserai with its seething turmoil and babel of noises of man and beast;

and can say with L'Estrange as he sinks in slumber, "We have a horror for uncouth monsters, but, upon experience, all these bugs grow easy and familiar to us," then Persia will prove a joy, as one of the last strongholds of untrammeled out-of-door life in the unadulterated Orient.

One approaches Enzeli with a dread, and leaves the Caspian steamer with a regret and a wonder: a dread of the bar which steamers cannot pass, which in rough weather will give you a thorough drenching ere your frail boat has crossed its stormy breast, and which at times is altogether impassable, necessitating a return to Baku, — whither a certain French diplomat was once carried back four times before a landing could be effected; a regret to leave the home of the delicious fresh gray caviar which, once tasted, makes all the black potted stuff we are familiar with seem like so much wheel-grease; a wonder that the Persian government should ever have surrendered its rights on the Caspian Sea. When in 1789 Hadji Mirza Akasi, then prime minister, ceded the sole right to navigate this sea to the Russians, he flippantly remarked, "Not being water fowl, what need have we of salt water ?” adding, with a complacency which did little credit to his political sagacity," nor for a few drops of it should we embitter the palate of a friend." While the writer was in Persia the strategic value of this concession was being tested by experiments with the Russian merchant fleet, with a view to ascertaining the force which could be landed within a given time on the Persian coast in the event of offensive operations.

Along the south Caspian shore and eastward along the whole northern Persian frontier stretch the Elburz Mountains, generally snow-covered, and terminated near Teheran by the splendid volcanic peak of Demavend, variously estimated at from 18,000 to 22,000 feet in altitude. Clothed with verdure and crowned with snow, they form a mag

nificent background at Enzeli, where naught but man is vile. A pagoda-like building situated in an orange grove and devoted to the entertainment of newly arriving ministers and officials is the only attraction of which Enzeli can boast; and like most royal edifices in Mohammedan countries, it is marked by the neglect and decay which characterize all buildings not built or occupied by the reigning sovereign. The Shah's yacht lends what dignity it can to official entries, but is more suggestive of a tugboat than a royal yacht, though very useful in crossing the great Enzeli lagoon, a shallow basin within the bar, many miles in extent, where passage in a rowboat is a tedious affair, enlivened only by the pelicans, cranes, ospreys, and gulls which swarm among its reedy shores and islands. A muddy river, ascended by alternate rowing, poling, and tracking, leads to Per-ibazar, consisting of a few huts and the omnipresent custom house, whence one struggles for six miles through a veritable sea of mud to Resht, where the real journey to Teheran begins. This a few years ago, when there was no Russian road from Enzeli to the capital, when one followed the old caravan track which countless feet have worn from the days of Darius, worn literally in the rock in holes so deep that unless your mount has his right foot forward he must in places stop and start afresh.

Before the completion of the carriage road travelers unencumbered by baggage made the journey of some two hundred and forty miles to Teheran in the saddle, covering two or even more stages of twenty-five miles each per day, and putting up with such shelter, food and horses as the post-houses or villages afforded. But more commonly, and especially with ladies, it was customary to travel "caravan," that is, with one's own animals, the necessary impedimenta of folding-beds, tables, chairs, rugs, curtains, and cooking utensils, permitting of only one stage a day. The length of a stage varies throughout Persia, depend

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ing on the character of the country, and is reckoned in farsaks, the old Greek parasang. The farsak is a most elastic and uncertain measure, and as animals are paid for per farsak, as many as the credulity of the traveler will allow are crowded into each stage. "How far," I once asked an old Kurdish muleteer, "is a farsak?" "As far as one can distinguish a gray from a brown camel," was the discreet answer. They average about four miles, and the stage about six farsaks, or twenty-five miles.

At the end of each stage is either a caravanserai or chapar-khaneh where the night is passed. The caravanserais, the more important of which are ascribed to the reign of Shah Abbas the Great, of that Safavi dynasty which perished in the Afghan invasion of 1722, consist of a gateway leading into an open court surrounded by stables, with rooms overhead. The chapar-khaneh is a rest house for those who travel by post. In either case your servants hunt up an empty room, spread a rug, hang a curtain, unfold table, chairs, and bed, and, if you have been provident, fill your rubber bath, and in an incredibly short time, the samovar is steaming and your cook has an appetizing meal ready. Subsequently you will stroll in the courtyard crowded with camels snarling at their drivers, or calmly eating their dry-as-dust fodder with that sardonic disdain peculiar to them, with donkeys patiently waiting to be relieved of their loads, and the noisy mongrel humanity which makes up an Eastern caravan. Then darkness comes on, the hubbub gradually subsides, the stars come out, the smoke ascends from flickering fires into the silence and the night, and you seek your own rest, to be awakened perhaps by the tinkling bells of a late-arriving caravan, and most certainly to be reminded before dawn of the plaint of the French traveler, “Ce n'est pas la piqûre dont je me plains, c'est la promenade."

The journey to Teheran may be divided into three parts, each distinct in

character, - the Caspian border, the mountains, and the desert plain.

The Caspian border is the zone of rain and cloud which rarely pass the Elburz. Nearly all the moisture is precipitated on the northern slopes, which are therefore covered with forest and verdure. The first two stages lie through level reaches of mulberry, -for Resht thrives on the culture of the silkworm, groves of olive, and forests of tamarisk and oak. On the second day you spread your lunch under the last olive, and on the third the track leaves the haunts of moss and fern and violet, to enter the rocky valley of the Sefid Rud, which it frequently fords, sometimes following the bare portions of the channel, sometimes clinging between a rock wall and a precipice where to pass a caravan is a ticklish business, sometimes scrambling up ledges where angels might well fear to tread, only to descend again on rocky stairways where angels would positively refuse to venture. My companion was quite ready to discard the seat of her sex for a cavalry saddle, especially after having forced one of a passing train of loaded donkeys over a precipice, to be seen no more. A pack animal knows well the safety side of the path. When in full possession of the whole track he will skirt the edge with provoking assurance, but when meeting another animal he will stubbornly contend for the inside passage. Some idea of the amount of traffic may be gained from the fact that in one. day's journey on the two stages between Rustemabad, Menjil, and Paichenar, I counted 1394 animals.

The ford at Paichenar in flood time often proved a disastrous obstacle. In its foaming waters the pack mules of the wife of an English diplomat lost their footing, recovering themselves only after having soaked the contents of their loads. I met their owner, on her way to England, at Tiflis where, as lady-in-waiting to the then Princess of Wales and anticipating a London season, she was bemoaning her condition of "nothing to wear."

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