It Was
Not Until Dusk That We Reached Rabat Kerim, A Small Mud Village, With
A Filthy Windowless Post-House.
But a pigstye would have been welcome
after such a ride, and the vermin which a flickering oil-lamp revealed
in hundreds, on walls and flooring, did not prevent our sleeping
soundly till morning.
My thermometer marked only one degree above zero
when we retired to rest, and the wood was too damp to light a fire.
But we are in Persia!
It is only fair, however, to say that the road we were now travelling
is not the regular post-road, which lies some distance to the eastward
of Rabat Kerim, but was now impassable on account of the snow.
The smaller track joins the main road at Koom. By taking the less
frequented track, we were unable to go through the "Malak al Niote,"
or "Valley of the Angel of Death," which lies about half-way between
the capital and Koom. The valley is so called from its desolate and
sterile appearance, though, if this be so, the greater part of Persia
might with reason bear the same name. Be this as it may, the Shagirds
and natives have the greatest objection to passing through it after
dark. A legend avers that it is haunted by monsters having the bodies
of men and heads of beasts and birds. Surrounded by these apparitions,
who lick his face and hands till he is unconscious, the traveller is
carried away - where, history does not state - never to return.
If the first day's work had been hard, it was child's play compared to
the second. The track, leading over a vast plain, had recently been
traversed by a number of camel caravans, which had transformed it into
a kind of Jacob's ladder formed by holes a couple of feet deep in the
snow. As long as the horses trod into them all went well, but a few
inches to the right or left generally brought them blundering on to
their noses. The reader may imagine what a day of this work means. The
strain on mind and muscle was almost unbearable, to say nothing of the
blinding glare. Yet one could not but admire, during our brief pauses
for rest, the picture before us. The boundless expanse of sapphire
blue and dazzling white, with not a speck to mar it, save where,
occasionally, the warm sun-rays had, here and there, laid bare chains
of dark rocks, giving them the appearance of islands in this ocean of
snow.
At Pitche, the midday station, no horses were to be had; so,
notwithstanding that deep snow-drifts lay between us and Kushku Baira,
the halt for the night, we were compelled, after a couple of hours'
rest, to set out on the ponies that had brought us from Rabat Kerim.
More perhaps by good luck than anything else, we reached the latter
towards 9 p.m. A bright starlit night favoured us, and, with the
exception of a couple of falls apiece, we were none the worse. We
found, too, to our great delight, a blazing fire burning in the
post-house, kindled by some caravan-men. But there is always a saving
clause in Persia. No water was to be had for love or money till the
morning, and, knowing the raging thirst produced by melted snow, we
had to forget our thirst till next day.
[Illustration: POST-HOUSE AT KUSHKU BAIRA]
A pleasant surprise also was in store for us. Two or three miles
beyond Kushku Baira we were clear of snow altogether. Not a vestige
of white was visible upon the bare stony plain. Nothing but dull drab
desert, stretching away on every side to a horizon of snow-capt hills,
recalling, by their very whiteness, the miseries of the past two days.
"Berik Allah!" [B] cried Gerome. "We have done with the snow now."
"Inshallah!" [C] I replied, though with an inward conviction that we
should see it again further on, and suffer accordingly.
The sacred city of Koom [D] is one of the pleasantest recollections I
retain of the ride between the capital and Ispahan. It was about two
o'clock on the afternoon of the 6th of February that, breasting a
chain of low sandy hills, the huge golden dome of the Tomb of Fatima
became visible. We were then still four miles off; but, even with our
jaded steeds, the ride became what it had not yet been - a pleasure.
The green sunlit plains of wheat and barley, interspersed with bars of
white and red poppies, the picturesque, happy-looking peasantry, the
strings of mule and camel caravans, with their gaudy trappings and
clashing bells, - all this life, colour, and movement helped to give
one new hope and energy, and drown the dreary remembrance of past
troubles, bodily and mental. Even the caravans of corpses sent to Koom
for interment, which we passed every now and again, failed to depress
us, though at times the effluvia was somewhat overpowering, many of
the bodies being brought to the sacred city from the most remote
parts of Persia. Each mule bore two dead bodies, slung on either
side, like saddle-bags, and one could clearly trace the outline of
the figure wrapped in blue or grey cloth. A few of the friends and
relatives of some of the deceased accompanied this weird procession,
but the greater number of the dead had been consigned to the care
of the muleteers. The latter, in true chalvadar [E] fashion, were
stretched out flat on their stomachs fast asleep, their heads lolling
over their animals, arms and legs dangling helplessly, while the
caravan roamed about the track unchecked, banging their loads against
each other, to the silent discomfiture of the unfortunate mourners.
[Illustration: A CORPSE CARAVAN]
Koom is said to cover nearly twice as much ground as Shiraz, but more
than half the city is in ruins, the Afghans having destroyed it in
1722.
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