10 TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



throw of his crooked policy), made, on the contrary, 

 daily protestations that he was doing everything he 

 could to aid our departure. At length, seeing that 

 we were not to be denied, he said openly that we 

 should travel at our own risk, and that he would 

 provide no escort, and that no Commissioner on the 

 part of Persia would he sent with the English Com- 

 missioners to Herat. After some long marches, 

 sometimes by day, sometimes by night, suffering at 

 times, both our cattle and selves, from a scarcity of 

 good water, and after having passed by some of the 

 favourite Turkoman haunts without being led off a 

 string of white slaves to the market of Bokhara, an 

 event that had been hinted to us as probable, we 

 finally arrived at Herat in the month of September. 

 But before we reached that place, my head servant, 

 who, I believe, had been a servant of Mr Layard 

 during his sojourn at Nineveh, died one morning 

 from sheer fatigue. 



\Yu remained the winter in the city, guests of the 

 Afghaan chief, Sultan Ahmed Khan, the chief known 

 as Sultan Jan during the Afghaan war. In the 

 early spring of the year we turned our horses' heads 

 westwards, and rode for Teheran, but pursuing a 

 route more to the southward than the one we had 

 come by, and which, I believe, had not been travelled 

 by any European since Forster in 1783-84. From 

 the capital we struck south by Ispahan and Shiraz. 

 From the latter place we descended the formidable 



