This, With Our Own Provisions Bought In
The Morning, Furnished A Substantial And Much-Needed Meal.
Persian
native bread is somewhat trying at first to a weak digestion.
It is
unleavened, baked in long thin strips, and is of suet-like consistency.
The hut, like most native houses in Persia, had no chimney, the only
outlet for the smoke being through the narrow doorway. This necessitates
lying flat on one's back in the clear narrow space between smoke and
flooring, or being suffocated - a minor inconvenience as compared with
others in Persian travel.
The Khivan arrived with the horses at six next morning. By seven
o'clock we were well on the road, which for the first ten miles or so
led by the sea-shore, through dense thickets of brushwood, alternating
with patches of loose drifting sand. I was agreeably disappointed in
the ponies; for though it was deep, heavy going, they stepped out well
and freely. The clear sunshine, keen air, and lovely scenery seemed to
have the same inspiriting effect on them as on ourselves.
The _coup d'oeil_ was indeed a lovely one. To our right a glorious
panorama of palm, forest, and river stretched away for miles, bounded
on the horizon by a chain of lofty precipitous mountains, their snowy
peaks white and dazzling against the deep cloudless blue, their
grassy slopes and rocky ravines hidden, here and there, by grey mists
floating lazily over depths of dark green forest at their feet. To our
left broad yellow sands, streaked with seaweed and dark driftwood, and
cold grey waters of the Caspian Sea - colourless and dead even under
this Mediterranean sky, and bringing one back, so to speak, from a
beautiful dream to stern reality.
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