Robert John Kennedy

“ Here there is a small village, with a ruined fort on a mound, and a large, square, post-station, looking more like a prison than a halting-place for travellers, and at 1.30 we left its dreary walls and continued our journey to Shahrûd, sixteen miles. Our route was north-north-east, by a well-beaten track, over a stony hill skirt; at times it followed the border of the eternal salt waste on our right, and at others skirted the hills on our left. ”

“ Our destination was Lasgird, twenty-five miles distant. Our route lay east, north-east, and east, skirting the borders of the Great Desert, over a clayey and spongy soil, covered with camel thorn and scanty herbage, and utterly devoid of water. A ride of little under two hours brought us to the village of Abdullahabad, where we stopped for half an hour's refreshment in a Persian teahouse. ”

“ Curzon, only one hundred and fifty are Europeans, nearly all of them Russians, Germans, or Poles. The majority of the native population are Tajïks and Uzbegs, and the gorgeousness of their apparel, even the humblest of them wearing the most gaudily coloured, and, in European eyes, the most costly of silk robes, lends an extraordinary brilliancy to their surroundings. Mr. Curzon has pointed out that Bokhara has long set the fashion in Central Asia in the matter of dress, and that it is the great clothes mart of the East. ”

“ Begun originally as a purely military railway, which contributed in a great measure to the successful and bloody storming of the Turcoman stronghold of Geok Tepe, the railway, built and even now exclusively worked by officers and soldiers selected from 'the railway battalions' of the Russian army, has gradually been pushed on over sandy deserts, through fertile oases, and across broad streams, until it stretches from Uzun-Ada, on the Caspian, to Samarcand, on the Zerafshan, a distance of nine hundred and sixty-five miles. ”

“ Scarcely had we emerged from the town when we found ourselves exposed to the full fury of the sand which had increased, instead of, as we had fondly hoped, diminished, in violence. Our route lay due east, over an undulating plain with gravelly soil, and our destination was the post-house of Zafarani, twenty-five miles distant, but after struggling for about fourteen miles against the storm, we resolved, in consequence of the night closing in, to seek shelter in a wayside village, Jouley, which was indicated to us by a wayfarer whom we chanced to pass. ”

“ Wedged in between the Russian dominions of Turkestan on one side, and Transcaspia on the other, and traversed by a military railway, which, as a great concession on the part of Russia, does not pass within ten miles of 'Bokhara the Noble,' the Amir is nothing but a humble vassal and servant of Russia, which does not occupy the country, because she derives all the benefits from it, which she can wish to obtain, without incurring the expense of its administration. ”

“ Our chavadar, in view of the stiff mountain pass which we had that day to cross, objected to leaving Raineh, but as we had no intention of being imprisoned for an indefinite time in this solitary Persian village, we compelled him to proceed. Wrapped in thick cloaks and waterproofs, with our heads bound up in 'Bashliks' and sou'westers, we clambered slowly up the dreary mountain pass in deep snow, proceeding in single file. All the mountain tops were lost to sight in the driving snowstorm. ”

“ We rode along the main street, the Khiaben, which is about 2700 yards long, through the bazaars, where much hot and even angry discussion arose as to whether the occupants of the side-saddles were men or women, and finally dismounted at 11.40 at General MacLean's house, where, for the first time for nearly a fortnight, we sat down at a table to a comfortable luncheon, instead of crouching upon the floor.
At Meshed we remained eight days, and recruited our strength in the hospitable house of General MacLean. It is impossible for us to do justice in words to all his kindness towards us. ”

“ Our route lay north-north-east by north on a good, hard, gravelly road, over a gently falling desert waste, with hills on either side. We reached the station-house of Ghûsheh, where there is no village, before half-past ten, having covered the twenty-four miles in three hours. After an hour's halt for luncheon we pushed on to Damghan, following the line of telegraph over a hot, gravelly road and stony desert, passing numerous villages, including Daulatabad, with its triple wall and ditch. ”

“ 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. ”

“ At that time Askabad was a mere Turcoman settlement, and I little thought when I parted from them in the forests of Finland that our next meeting-place would be in the Steppes of Central Asia.
Askabad is a flourishing modern town, built in the ordinary Russian style, with broad boulevards, one-storeyed, whitewashed houses, and possessing a church with the usual green roof. The town lies in a barren plain, which in the spring contains a certain amount of scanty herbage, and it is about six miles distant from the Kopet Dach range of mountains, which here form the Persian boundary. ”

“ For the first fourteen miles the country had a smiling, prosperous look, but the last six miles were over gravelly and stony ground. We reached Kadamgah, where there is a good post-house, a caravanserai, and a shrine of some note, at 11.30. Tradition says that a mark on a large stone at Kadamgah is the foot-print of the holy Imaum Riza, whose shrine is at Meshed. That saint certainly showed excellent taste in halting at Kadamgah, as it is a most picturesque spot, with beautiful trees and rich cultivation, but it is inhabited by Syeds, who are, of course, a rascally lot. ”

“ At eight o'clock we mounted, and proceeded in single file over a sandy and desert plain at a foot's pace for about four miles, when we passed a huge caravanserai, into which, in despair, we turned for shelter. It was crowded with camels, donkeys, and native travellers, weatherbound like ourselves, and it was almost painful to see the cakes of sand clotted round the eyes of the unfortunate animals, which we knew from personal experience must have been causing intolerable irritation. ”

“ About two miles from the principal gate of the city we were met by General MacLean on horseback, accompanied by his escort of six Indian Sowars in full uniform, and six Turcoman gholams in their picturesque native dress; and with this escort we rode into the capital of the Khorassan. This city, like Tehran, is surrounded by a mud rampart, with a broad ditch about ten feet deep and thirty feet broad; it is about six miles in circumference, and is commercially of considerable importance, as it is the great centre of trade between India, Persia, and Bokhara. ”

“ The land is said to be fertile and productive; but no strangers are under any pretext allowed to penetrate this mountain fastness, as it is well known that the greedy eye of the restless Russian invader is fixed with a covetous glitter upon this military prize. Eighteen miles from Karatagan, the valley along which we had been riding, due north, suddenly closes up, leaving but a narrow exit between some high cliffs. ”

“ He is an Englishman who has been many years in the Russian service, and who sensibly makes the best of his existence in the muddy little village, where he occupies a fairly comfortable house. From him I learnt that a concession of all the fishing in the Persian waters of the Caspian is held by a Russian merchant, who pays the Shah an annual sum of 45,000l. for the privilege, and makes a large fortune out of it. The whole of this northern part of Persia, in striking contrast to the sandy steppes we had left, is hilly, thickly wooded, and saturated with moisture ”

“ Our road lay east and north-east, through a plain rich in cultivation and pasturage. We passed many well-watered villages, two of which, built upon artificial mounds, are especially remarkable. After a ten-mile gallop, which we accomplished in an hour and a quarter, during part of which we were engaged in an exciting chase after a stray jackal, we reached the Persian telegraph station of Avadân. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Though there was no formal indication of this being the frontier, neither guards nor frontier pillars being anywhere visible, General MacLean decided that it would be advisable for us here to separate. Under the shade of the rocks, near a pool of running water, in which hundreds of sheep, goats, lambs, and kids were slaking their thirst, we lunched for the last time in company with our host. ”

“ Sabziwar is a fortified town of eighteen thousand inhabitants, in which a great deal of trade is springing up with Kuchan and Askabad, and where the cultivation of cotton is greatly on the increase. The 'manzil,' or station house, where we lunched, is a very shabby one for so important a town as Sabziwar, and enjoys an unpleasant notoriety for thieving and plundering. The Persian telegraph clerk, who called on us during luncheon, brought us some Tehran telegrams and conveyed messages for us to our distant friends. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Curzon has declared that the Reghistan of Samarcand was originally, and is still even in its ruins, the noblest public square in the world.
'There is nothing,' he says, 'in the East approaching it in massive simplicity and grandeur, and nothing in Europe, save, perhaps, on a humbler scale, the Piazza di San Marco, at Venice, which can even aspire to enter the competition. No European spectacle,indeed, can adequately be compared with it in our inability to point to an open space in any western city that is commanded on three of its four sides by Gothic cathedrals of the finest order. ”

“ From Avadân we passed several villages, and traversed an alluvial plain, which was eventually replaced by a gravelly desert. We passed through a large district covered with a white substance of a salt nature, used by the peasants as manure, and which is probably a kind of nitrate. We reached the village of Deh Namek, i.e., the salt village, shortly before eleven. It is a very miserable place, consisting of about fifty poor huts round an artificial mound, where the water, from its close proximity to the Great Salt Desert is very brackish, and where there are no supplies of any kind. ”

“ After some wrangling with this individual, who appeared to be even more obstinate than the ordinary run of Persian mule-owners, we left him to his own devices, warning him that if he did not turn up that night at our proposed halting-place — the village of Ar — he might apply in vain for his money. We then pushed on through the snowy mist, our gholam remarking that the chavadar's love of money would compel him to follow us, once he saw that we were fairly determined to continue our route. ”

“ Many of the people are wretchedly poor, but living is absurdly cheap, and your pauper, undaunted by material woes, walks abroad with the dignity of a patriarch, and in the garb of a prince.'
We left Bokhara by the 7.30 morning train on Wednesday, 17th of April, driving to the station in the same carriage and with the same escort with which we had arrived. The Klemms travelled in our train on their way to Tcharjui, on the Bokharian frontier, in order to make arrangements for the approaching arrival of the Prince of Naples, the heir to the throne of Italy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On Tuesday, April 1st, we started for our final day's march to Dushak; our kind host resolved to accompany us as far as the frontier, but not to go further, in order to avoid arousing the extraordinary susceptibilities of the Russians, who, conscious probably of their present local military weakness, and of their own habit of spying and intriguing in their neighbours' dominions, view with suspicion and ill-concealed hostility the visit of strangers in Transcaspia, more especially when those strangers are of English blood. ”

“ From Mazinan to Mihr the distance is twenty miles, and this with the good horses with which we were supplied we covered in two and a half hours. The road was good, but uninteresting, with hills on one side and the Desert on the other. Mihr is a pretty village with trees, cultivated ground, and many streams of water. The chapar khaneh was good, but, unlike the majority of them, was commanded by the neighbouring houses, from the roof of which the inhabitants watched all our proceedings with irritating pertinacity, until they were driven off by threats and imprecations. ”

“ In the neighbouring cemetery are laid thousands of corpses, transported from different parts of the empire, who in their passage to their last resting-place have tainted the pure summer air with their odoriferous exhalations,whilst within the outer court of the shrine are collected criminals of every shade, who have taken 'bust' or refuge from the arm of the law or from the vengeance of their private pursuers. ”