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My own audience with the Shah was delayed some weeks by the non-arrival of baggage, and for a time I feared it might be lying where I had seen a piano destined for a Teheran legation, - in this same ford of Paichenar, where, still awash in its case, I saw it again, six months later. A mishap of some kind was not unfrequent on the Resht-Teheran journey. It was at the end of the Menjil stage that the wife of the manager of the Imperial Bank at Teheran arrived one night to find her baby missing. It had slipped from the kejaveh, or panier, on the mule's back, and was found, with the aid of a lantern, some distance back by the roadside, uninjured.

The trail rises steadily on the fourth stage, and on the fifth climbs sharply to the summit of the Kazan pass, about seven thousand feet in altitude. Around you stretches a sea of mountain billows, crested with snow, and southward lies the great Iranian plateau, on which, thirty miles away, a dark spot marks the site of Kasvin, an ancient capital of Persia. Crossing this pass in April, we heard no patter of rain on leaves again till late December. You have left the zone of cloud and forest and will hereafter see no tree or flower that does not grow in garden or by running water.

From Kasvin to Teheran, about one hundred miles, you are riding along the southern flank of the Elburz, the illimitable plain stretching to the east, south, and west, the deep turquoise blue overhead. So abrupt is the change, it is difficult to realize that just over that bare mountain sky line are cool forests, the shadows of clouds and falling rain. But these bare mountains clothe themselves at dawn and twilight with the most delicate shades of color, and the dry clear air and sunshine of the Iranian plain is far preferable to the muggy atmosphere of Mazendaran and Resht. The old emblem of the fireworshipers, the sun, is a fitting national device. The woman's face in the centre was added, it is said, by one of the Persian monarchs as a

memorial of his favorite wife. The lion below the sun is the sign of the Mohammedan conqueror, for Ali was called the Lion of God.

Over this so-called road from Kasvin to Teheran, whose dozen mule-tracks twist and turn between the loose stones like a loosened braid of rope, you may drive if you choose in a lumbering carriage drawn by four horses abreast, à la Russe. On this road our luckily halfstarved post horses once ran away. When it became clear that they were beyond control I shouted to the servant on the box to urge the driver to hold on. “He speaks to them but they will not listen," was the picturesque reply. The anticlimax was at hand. For after sheer exhaustion had brought them to a halt, a wheel came off and we were obliged to walk three miles to the next post-house. Here a discarded cart wheel was fitted to the axle by sawing off a portion of the hub. It groaned at every revolution, but it revolved.

Stealing the fodder and grain of animals is a universal Persian habit. An English official told me that during his many years of residence in Persia either he, his wife, or the governess, had never failed to be present at the feeding hour. Coachman and stableboy invariably steal all they dare of each day's allowance, to sell it for a pittance in the bazaar, and on several occasions I had my own horses fall under me from weakness, although apparently in good condition, they having missed a day or two's food.

The completion of the Russian road has bettered the conditions of this particular journey. Elsewhere they remain unchanged. The passage of the Kazan pass in winter was formerly a critical matter in stormy weather. Whole caravans have perished there, and Teheran was not unfrequently without mails for a fortnight. It was, moreover, a curious thing to see the pack trains refusing to take such portions of the new road as had been completed, following the old rough trail although no tolls were then

exacted. For the enjoyment of travel in Persia one must be properly equipped, have good horses and servants, and be fond of life in the saddle. Persian servants are at their best on the road, for they are born nomads. Habits permissible on a journey are a source of constant vexation in town life, and they have little conception of neatness or care of what is really good. When moving up to the Shimran for the summer it was somewhat discouraging to find hens and chickens comfortably installed in imported salon furniture, which had been so loaded on the heavy wagons that the seat of every chair was threatened with puncture by the legs of its neighbor. Tents are not necessary unless the post roads are abandoned, but are a luxury; for the caravanserai and chapar-khaneh are often crowded and always filthy. In this case the maximum of luxury is a double outfit, one equipment being on the road while you are yet asleep, to be ready for your arrival at the end of the day's journey.

An official entry into Persia is a shield of two sides. On the one hand is the novelty and freshness of Oriental life, and the pleasant sense of importance due to the ceremonies of reception by the governors of provinces and cities through which one passes, as well as at the capital itself. On the other hand, while most European governments provide traveling expenses, not only for the minister but also for his family and household servants, and in some cases an allowance for outfit, an American minister starts on his journey with no such provision, arrives at his post homeless, with a salary in my day of $5000,1 as against the £5000 of his English colleague. Other governments too have much prized decorations, sometimes bestowed in acknowledgment of special courtesies received on the road, although a rifle, a watch, or even money are accepted without hesitation. Baksheesh of this variety forms no inconsiderable item of the traveling ac1 Since raised to $7500.

count, and must be reckoned with as a universal obligation. The official who entertains you at breakfast or at whose house you pass the night, the mounted escort which meets you a half day's journey from the city gates, and accompanies you on your departure, the imperial envoy, or memendah, who greets you at the frontier and is charged with your journey to the capital, the various officials concerned in your official reception, the servant who brings the horse presented to each newly arriving minister by His Majesty, must all be remembered in a substantial manner. When my horse was brought, the Vice-Consul-General, whose long residence in Persia renders him a valuable adviser, counseled its immediate return. "What, a gift from the Shah!" "Oh, the Shah knows nothing about it. He will be charged a hundred tomans for a beast not worth ten." The horse was in fact returned and a good Arab substituted. His Majesty himself

is not above this form of baksheesh, and on one occasion, after dining at the house of the prime minister, accepted one thousand gold pieces, a number of richly caparisoned horses, besides silks, carpets, and embroideries for the harem, as a token that his condescension was appreciated.

The East loves splendor and reckons worth by display. A Persian nobleman never walks abroad without his retinue of

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followers, ragged though they may be. Too much economy may be fatal to the consideration and influence necessary the effective discharge of official duties, a fact never lost sight of by governments accustomed to the ways of the Orient. An amusing illustration of the effect of our democratic business methods occurred after the death of the present Shah's grandfather. The envoy sent to Washington to announce the advent of the new sovereign to the throne was met by no memendah on landing, nor did any escort greet him on his arrival at Washington. He made his way with his suite to the hotel and was assigned to

number so-and-so like any other traveler. Nor did any state carriage convey him to the State Department on the day of the presentation of his credentials. On entering the elevator with the Secretary of State on his way to the White House, the Secretary excused himself a moment, having left some important papers behind, and when at last he had presented his credentials, and the customary exchange of speeches had taken place, the President excused himself on the plea of important business with the Secretary of State. All this is inexplicable to the Oriental mind, to which there is no business more important than the ceremony attaching to rank. This gentleman left our shores sore and indignant, and although later, when I knew him, he could laugh over his experiences, having like most Persians a keen sense of humor, it was only through the tact of the Vice-ConsulGeneral that the reprisals at first intended were averted.

Teheran claims a population of three hundred thousand souls, but no statistical information of value is available. The death-rate is roughly computed from the dead brought to the wash-houses, but is unreliable, as the bodies of children, among whom the mortality is great, are not as a rule taken to the wash-houses. Surrounded by a dry moat and parapet, and entered by twelve more or less imposing gates of variegated tile, the city lies on the plain ten miles from the Elburz mountains, which rise without foothills of any importance, like a series of rounded blocks set on a checkerboard. Immediately north of the city they have an altitude of twelve thousand feet, the snow disappearing for the most part in August. Demavend, however, keeps its snow mantle throughout the year, and long after the last rays of the sinking sun have faded from the neighboring crests its great white cone glows like an opal in the sunset fires. This mass of color, which lingers when all below and around has disappeared, suspended, detached as it were from all support, is a vision of mar

velous beauty. When at length the gray shadows creep up the cone and extinguish the great opal at its summit, the world seems dead indeed, and the mighty mountain itself but a ghostly shadow.

The proximity of the mountains affords Teheran an indispensable retreat in summer, most of the richer class, the legations, and royal household, having summer houses in the Shimran, or mountain district. The English government, besides its large city compound containing the minister's residence, separate houses for secretaries and resident English doctor, stables and garden, owns the entire village of Gulahek in the Shimran, where the summer legation is located. The Russians also own a Shimran village. The American Minister must not only hunt up his winter and summer quarters, often a difficult matter, but when transferred must bear the burden of unexpired leases. The furnishings of the official apartments, silver and table service, are also the property of the English government. To establish in a suitable manner several legations when, as frequently happens, several transfers occur within the space of a few years, is no slight undertaking, and it is certainly a curious fact that a great nation of democratic ideals should so scale the compensation of its representatives as to put its diplomatic honors beyond the reach of the great mass of its servants and make it necessary, in the consideration of their appointment, for talent and experience to give way to the aristocracy of riches, — a determining factor whose importance has greatly increased since the Spanish-American war.

From the mountains also Teheran derives its water. There is no public ownership or municipal supply. It is brought either on the surface in shallow open channels, or underground in tunnels, called kanáts, built and owned by private individuals. One follows an open waterway by its line of trees, and a kanát by the row of mounds of earth which come from the shafts of construction.

These shafts are sunk a hundred or two feet apart, and in some instances are several hundred feet in depth. The earth is raised by a windlass, and the shafts connected at their bases by an unlined tunnel, dug by hand as a mole burrows, without any instrument of precision. Certain kanáts come to the surface only within the city, where their water is sold to the pools and gardens of private houses, or is stolen, like any other commodity. Small earthen dams divert the stream as it runs by the roadside, where women wash and men drink within sight of each other. The kanát of the English legation, which comes to the surface only within the walls of the compound, and, moreover, runs under no villages or cemeteries, was by courtesy the source of our drinking water, brought in skins and afterwards boiled and filtered. Ice, gathered in winter from trenches dug along the north side of high walls, is used by Europeans only in special vessels with outside pouches, the ice itself never coming into contact with the contents. The water of the public baths, where our servants bathed weekly, was renewed about once a week, and as may be imagined was not pellucid. Living amid abundance of water, we forget how dependent is all the beauty of the vegetable world upon moisture. A line of trees marks the Shimran road, because their roots are fed by the stream running beside it. Beyond is the baked, cracked earth, above which the hot air trembles as over a chimney-top. Far away in this furnace of hot air is a yellow mud-brick wall. You approach, open a door, and enter a paradise, shade of trees, running water, deep pools, flowers, and the songs of birds. Do you wonder that the Persian poet praises these cool retreats of nightingale and rose? Not because they are common, but rare, as a western poet might sing of heroic virtues. Some of the Shimran gardens, especially that of the Naibu's Sultana, a brother to the late Shah, laid out with stone terraces forming stairways

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of falling water, and avenues of stately plane trees, are truly royal. But there is no sod. No grove of palm or richness of southern foliage can compensate for the absence of lawn. One walks in gravel paths. There is no wandering on the smooth turf in the shade of widespreading beeches, and greatest privation of one cannot lie down on the breast of our common mother. The Persian spreads a rug, to rest, to eat, to say his evening prayer. Hence often the thick coating of dust which the merchant at your door must rub away before you can fairly discern the design of your contemplated purchase.

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Many of the gardeners of Teheran are from the Parsee population. This remnant of the ancient race of fireworshipers is in general a superior class in point of morals and honesty, although they do not appear to possess the ambition and energy of their Indian brethren, difference, however, which may be accounted for by the more favorable conditions of English rule. Persecuted by the Mohammedan Persian, the Parsee looks down upon his persecutor. When endeavoring to purchase a small Christmas tree from the Parsee gardener of a Persian villa, whose master was absent, I suggested that from so many trees one surely would not be missed. "Am I a Persian dog that I should do this thing," was the reply. A few krans would have sufficed for the ordinary Persian gardener. Teheran is more tolerant of the Parsees than other Persian cities, where, as in Yezd and Kerman, they are obliged to wear a dress which distinguishes them from Moslems. Until within recent years they have been subjected to a variety of vexatious extortions in the form of special taxes, and irritating restrictions, such as the prohibition to build houses of more than one story, to ride in the public streets, to wear white stockings or garments of certain colors, to frequent the public baths, or to make use of spectacles and umbrellas. Edicts of the late Shah, and of his father, relieving them from

many of these restrictions, have not proved of much effect, it being easier to issue a firman than to overcome native intolerance. We are just beginning in America to understand race hatred as a deep-seated fact of human nature which cannot be exorcised by meetings in Faneuil Hall or eradicated by abstract theorizations. Its fierce intensity appalls the traveler in the Balkans and the East. Jewish merchants are permitted to show their wares in Teheran harems, for a Jew is not a man. The Armenians are scorned not only as Christians, but as a cowardly, womanish race. Persians are themselves of two races, and as the Ionian Greek despised his ruder neighbor of Dorian blood, so the fanatical descendant of the Turkish tribes in the north, whose earlier home lies east of the Caspian, is despised by his clever, lighthearted brother in the south, of Aryan stock, who avers that the ass once complained to God, asking, "Why has Thou created me, seeing Thou has already created the Turk?" To which answer was made, "Verily We created the Turk in order that the excellence of thine understanding might be apparent." 1

The lion and the sun of the national emblem bear witness to the further blend of races with the Arabian conquerors. After the struggle between the Kajar tribes and the Zend dynasty, which established the former as the reigning race, Teheran became the capital, and the ancient seats of Persian power in the south, Isfahan and Shiraz, where absolutely no loyalty or affection for their present rulers exists, were neglected. Official announcements of the Kajar usurper borrow the language of a glory which is not his, as if the Shah were a descendant of Cyrus, - an ethnological absurdity. "The Sovereign whose standard is the Sun, and whose brightness is that of the skies, whose armies are as the stars, whose greatness is that of Jemshid, and whose splendor equals that 1 This anecdote was related to Professor Browne in Kerman.

VOL. 101 NO. 1

of Darius," etc. Whose armies are as the stars! At once I see the ragged soldiers assigned to the guard of the legation, whose shoes and overcoats were furnished by the American Minister, whose pay was a few paltry krans a month, yet who passed their spare time in the bazaar as changers and lenders of money!

The hatred existing between the Persian and the Turk is intensified by their religious differences, the former belonging to the Shiah and the latter to the Sunni faith, these being the two great rival sects of Islam. The sufferings and martyrdom of Hussein the son of Ali, whom the Shiahs regard as the legitimate successor of the Prophet, are the theme of religious ceremonies at which women wail and weep as at a burial, and men work themselves into a frenzy of religious fervor. The Persian curse, directed at the first three caliphs and recited like the Catholic "Hail Mary" as an act of virtue, voices the intensity of Shiah bit

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"O God, curse Omar; then Abu Bekv and Omar; then Othman and Omar; then Omar, then Omar.”

Although of a sunnier disposition, the Persian Shiah is far more bigoted than his Turkish co-religionist. One may visit with impunity the mosques of Cairo and Constantinople, but it is difficult to obtain access to a Persian mosque except in disguise, a proceeding likely to be followed by unpleasant if not dangerous consequences. Yet, though intensely bigoted, he is passionately fond of speculative discussion. This is true not only of the cultivated classes, but equally so of the huckster in the bazaar and the idler in the tea-house. In no other land do the problems and mysteries of life which we relegate to the schoolmen form so absorbing a theme for every-day conversation, and this characteristic brings one at once into intimate contact with the thought and heart of the people. A desire for discussion, an eagerness to probe the reasons for your own beliefs,

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