)22 



THE MUSEUM. 



them contained silver or gold. I have 

 to confess that, with all my efforts to 

 interest him, he appeared to have a 

 rather tired and bored look, and not to 

 be particularly anxious to prolong the 

 audience. Under the circumstances, 

 I myself felt in the same way; in short, 

 our interview reminded me strikingly 

 of Mark Twain's account of his first 

 meeting with General Grant at the 

 White House, at which he felt consid- 

 erably constrained and overcome, but 

 met the difficulty by frankly saying: 

 "Mr. President, I feel a good deal 

 embarrassed, don't you.'" 



However, one point in our conver- 

 sation with the Shah particularly in- 

 terested me. This was when, turning 

 to the Guardian of the Palace, who 

 stood at his right, he made some re- 

 mark, illustrated by the fingers of one 

 hand crossing the other; at which the 

 Grand Vizier, speaking to me, said: 

 "His Majesty says you may have a 

 piece of the meteorite." This declar- 

 ation having been made, and I having 

 duly given my thanks, I bade a respect- 

 ful farewell, and our whole party, 

 leaving him standing, backed out the 

 entire length of the long hall, at the 

 infinite risk to some of us of suddenly 

 sitting down in an ungraceful manner. 

 Reaching the door, we passed out, and 

 our interview with His Imperial High- 

 ness, Mozuffer-ed-Din, "Victorious of 

 the Faith," "Iving of Kings, " "Asylum 

 of the Universe," was ended. 



As we descended the staircase the 

 Guardian of the Palace informed me 

 that in two days His Majesty would 

 go to the mountains for a week's hunt- 

 ing, and that then would be a proper 

 time for me to come to the Palace to 

 carry out my work. Accordingly, 

 after two days I returned with our con- 

 sul; a German photographer whose 

 services I had engaged; and a Persian 

 servant bearing a huge pair of scales 

 which I had borrowed at the hotel. 

 We found the meteorite on a low stand 

 upon the floor of the museum hall. It 

 was a mass shaped like an oblong loaf 

 of bread, about 1 6 inches long by 12 



inches wide and 8 inches thick; its 

 corners rounded and its surface covt r- 

 ed with the characteristic deep pittings. 

 We at once put it in the scales, find- 

 ing its weight to be just 113.^ pounds. 

 We then placed it upon the stand in 

 the center of the hall and photograph- 

 ed it from several sides and at various 

 distances, bringing into most of our 

 pictures some views of ihe hall itself. 

 In one of these we induced to stand by 

 the side of the specimen, the Guardian 

 of the Palace, a staid and portly gen- 

 tleman. We then had the specimen 

 carried down the Palace steps, across 

 the Gulistan, into one of the small 

 paved courtyards, where I undertook 

 to break off the piece which the Shah 

 had promised me. 



I found this to be no easy matter. 

 Had the mass been a Siderite, I might 

 have cut it with my steel saw, or had 

 it been an Aerolite, I might have 

 broken off a piece with a hammer; but 

 it was a Siderolite, a mixture of both 

 iron and stone, so tough as to be al- 

 most impossible to fracture. Further- 

 more, it had no corners or salient 

 points which I could attack. I sent 

 out to the street for a smith, who came 

 with a huge hammer and smote the 

 mass a score of times with all his force, 

 almost without any effect — so hard was 

 it. After two hours' work he had suc- 

 ceeded only in crunching off a dozen 

 or more small fragments, weighing to- 

 gether but about half a pound. It 

 then occurred to someone that we 

 should take the meteorite to the Arsen- 

 al, and there undertake to cut it by ma- 

 chinery. Receiving permission from 

 the Guardian of the Palace, who — 

 very wisely, as I thought — sent his son 

 along to see that the entire mass 

 should not get away to Rochester, I 

 put the specimen in a carriage and 

 drove to the Arsenal, a low stone 

 building in another part of the city. 

 There we fortunately found an old 

 steam planing machine. The engine 

 and boiler which should move it being 

 out of order, we were obliged to at- 

 tach men — ten or twelve of them — by 



