Tehran to Meshed.
Before writing an account of our daily travels during the above two months, it may be well to give a brief sketch of the geography and of the political importance of the countries which we traversed.
Khorassan is the north-eastern province of Persia, bounded on the east by Afghanistan, on the south by the Great Salt Desert, on the west by the other dominions of the Shah, and on the north by the recently acquired Russian province of Transcaspia. Its capital is Meshed, the sacred city of the votaries of the Sheite sect of the Mussulman religion, and till within very recent days no Christian was admitted within its sacred walls. Pilgrims flock to it from all quarters of Persia, and the pious dead are carried thither for burial in coffins slung upon the backs of mules. The presence of corpses in a caravan reveals itself with unpleasant pungency to the traveller who meets or catches up the laden mules. What Mecca is to the Mussulman Sunis, that Meshed is to the Mussulman Sheites.
Last year, after much diplomatic pressure, the Russians succeeded in establishing in the city a Consul-General, and this privilege having been conceded to one nation, a similar privilege was immediately claimed by the British Government, who obtained the recognition by the Shah of Major-General MacLean, the Viceroy of India's agent on the Perso-Afghan frontier, as Her Majesty's Consul-General, to reside in Meshed itself.
The post held by General MacLean may be described as that of an outpost sentinel, whose duty it is to watch and report upon the Russian advance from the Caspian on one side, and Turkestan on the other, which, begun a quarter of a century ago, and increasing in velocity year by year, threatens to crush, or, rather, to absorb the kingdoms of Persia and of Afghanistan, as it has already absorbed the khanates of Central Asia.
Central Asia is the vague term which for the purpose of this narrative may be held to describe the countries bounded by Khiva and the Kizil Kum Desert on the north, Tashkent and Kokan on the east, Northern Afghanistan and Northern Persia on the south, and the Caspian on the west. Its political importance lies in the fact that the whole of it has, within the last twenty-five years, become a Russian province. Its khans, or native princes, have been paralysed or overthrown by Russian diplomacy or by Russian arms. Alone the Khan of Bokhara maintains a position of quasi-independence, but his attenuated dominions, lying between the Russian provinces of Transcaspia and Turkestan, and traversed by a Russian military railway, may, for all practical purposes, be looked upon as forming part of the empire of the Czar.
A few days before starting on our journey, we received a telegram from Sir Robert Morier, Her Majesty's Ambassador at St. Petersburg, informing us that permission had been granted to us to make use of the Transcaspian railway as far as Samarcand, and that the local authorities had been duly informed. This railway, being a purely military one, is under the direction of the Ministry of War at St. Petersburg, and is not open for ordinary passenger traffic. Application for leave to travel on it had been made on our behalf three months previously by the English Foreign Office, at the request of Sir H. D. Wolff, and the long delay which ensued before a favourable reply was received threatened at one time to prevent the due accomplishment of the object we had in view. Nor was this the only difficulty which we had to encounter. Kind and anxious friends warned us of the risks and hardships which a lady especially would have to encounter during a seven hundred mile journey on horseback through Khorassan, and although our experience of journeys on horseback in Bulgaria and in Roumania enabled us to gauge pretty accurately our own powers of endurance, it was difficult to maintain our determination to carry out our purpose in the face of strongly worded advice, without appearing unduly obstinate and self-willed. From the outset, however, Sir Henry Wolff had cordially approved of the undertaking; and from General MacLean at Meshed, and Major Wells at Tehran, we received many valuable hints and much useful information.
With this preface I begin a narrative of our own personal movements.
Our party consisted of ourselves, Julia Chivers, lady's maid, and Ali Akbar Beg, Legation gholam, together with a 'chapar shaggard,' or post-boy, who was relieved at each station where horses were changed. Our baggage, which we had to carry with us on horseback, would have excited the curiosity and merriment of an English railway guard or porter. It was composed of three pairs of enormous leather saddle-bags, a 'mafrash,' or small leather portmanteau, constructed so as to be conveniently carried behind the saddle, a small leather valise, three pairs of holsters, besides blankets, waterproofs, and overcoats. The contents of the baggage were of a most miscellaneous description. A very limited wardrobe was allowed to each traveller, and the greater part of the available space was taken up with provisions, pots, pans, and other cooking utensils, besides two or three small carpets and three large linen sacks, which, filled with straw at night and spread upon the bare floor, served as beds.
The stations at which horses are changed vary in distance from sixteen to thirty miles. They are all built practically upon the same model. Four high, square, sun-dried mud walls, with flat roofs, surmounted by battlements and flanked by four towers, as a defence against Turcoman raiders, enclose a small, open, square yard, usually filled with manure and filth of every description. Round the yard are ranged stables, in which are to be found half a dozen of the most wretched specimens of the equine race to be seen anywhere outside of a Spanish bull-ring. On entering the massive doorway, which is always carefully closed at night, two small rooms are discovered, the one on the right, the other on the left; these rooms are perfectly empty of everything except dust and dirt. There are no windows, and the fireplace is generally constructed in such a manner that the smoke of the fire, which a cold and weary traveller causes to be kindled, seeks an exit through the door in preference to going up the chimney. As a natural consequence, the room is perfectly uninhabitable for the best part of an hour after one's arrival unless the traveller lies or crouches low on the floor, where the air is less impregnated with blinding smoke. Above the doorway, on the roof of the house, is the 'bala khaneh,' or upper room, which is only reached after a gymnastic performance specially painful to travellers whose limbs are stiffened by a fifty miles' journey on horseback during the course of the day. The steps of the small, winding staircase are about three feet in height, and many of them having crumbled away altogether, the ascent partakes much more of the nature of a mountaineering expedition than of the prosaic process of going upstairs.
The 'bala khaneh,' the origin of the English word 'balcony,' is a small, perfectly empty room, from ten to twelve feet square, generally with four unglazed windows and two doors, the wood of which having hopelessly warped can never, under any circumstances, be properly closed. The advantage of the bala khaneh over the lower rooms is that it is rarely, if ever, used by native travellers, and its mud floor and dilapidated walls are, comparatively speaking, clean. It can, however, only be inhabited in fine weather, and its occupant's first care, after causing it to be swept out, is to obtain the loan of as many stable rugs and old carpets as can be secured, in order to check the intrusion of the cold night air through all the numerous apertures which invite its entrance.
Some weeks before leaving Tehran we had obtained a promise from the Amin ed Dowleh, the Minister of Posts, that fresh horses would be secured for us at the different stations in place of the worn-out beasts with reference to which recent travellers had made loud but hitherto ineffectual complaints. The Amin ed Dowleh regretted that it was beyond his power to place the station houses in anything like decent order, but he gave us an open letter addressed to the naib, or postmaster, of each station, ordering each one to place himself at our entire disposal, and to give, or to obtain for us, any and every horse which we might wish to have. In justice to the naibs, it must be said that they obeyed their orders to the letter, and when the resources of their own stables broke down, as they occasionally did under the strain of having to supply five good horses, they unceremoniously, and in the most high-handed manner, impounded for our use the best horses to be provided in the village.
On the 6th of March, leaving our children in charge of their excellent nurse, Smith, we started from the British Legation, Tehran, early in the afternoon, under the best auspices. The weather was fine, but cool and cloudy, and we were accompanied through the town to the Khorassan Gate by a large party of friends on horseback. Following the usual Persian custom of making but a short journey the first day, in order that every body and every thing may shake down comfortably into their places, we arranged to halt the first night at the station of Kabut Gumbuz, twenty-four miles from Tehran. Major Wells, who, with M. Rakofsky, had resolved to accompany us one stage out of the twenty-four between Tehran and Meshed, had sent on his cook to prepare dinner at Kabut Gumbuz, in order that we might pass the first evening in comparative luxury, and be, so to speak, let down easy.