130 KERMANSHAH TO TEHERAN. 



king's anger and grief at this misfortune were terrible. 

 To quote the much -travelled baronet once more, " He 

 did not shed tears but blood 1 " Orders were given that 

 the physician who had allowed his beloved Hephsestion 

 to die should be crucified : all merriment was brought 

 to an end, and " that the groans and anguish of multi- 

 tudes might accompany his own, he sallied forth at the 

 head of a part of his army, attacked a defenceless 

 neighbouring district, and put all the inhabitants to 

 the sword : this he called sacrificing to Hephaestion's 

 ghost ! " In later days Hamadan suffered the usual 

 fate of cities which happened to lie in the path of 

 Timur, and, as though this was not enough, Agha 

 Mohammed swept down upon it to complete the de- 

 vastation. As one gazes upon the modern town one 

 feels that it has indeed experienced a blow from which 

 it has never recovered, and one may even be excused 

 for indorsing the saying that " Hamadan is the most 

 hateful of towns ; its children are old men for ugliness, 

 and its old men are children for silliness," though it 

 may strike one as invidious that such a description 

 should be applied to Hamadan in preference to any 

 other Persian town. 



From Hamadan the track lies across a succession of 

 hills and elevated valleys, which broaden out finally into 

 the level dust-coloured plains of Central Persia. The 

 weather the whole way was execrable — an almost con- 

 tinual blizzard for the first seven days — and the lateness 

 of the winter was spoken of on all sides as unusual. 

 At Teheran itself snow lay on the ground so late as the 

 last week in March, and the villagers all round were 

 bewailing the rapidity with which their mud -houses 

 were returning to their primary element. One day it 

 took us three hours to accomplish four miles in a driving 

 snowstorm, while underfoot the mud and slush were 



