38 TKAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



Having been brought up for the medical profession, 

 he was eventually attached as a doctor to the Persian 

 army, and he had served with it in that capacity the 

 greater part of his sojourn in the country. His house 

 was situated in the opposite quarter of the town to 

 that in which we were, so to reach it we had to make 

 our way through the crowded bazaars. The gholaum 

 rode in front of the party. With the zeal of new 

 office, he rained down blows upon the heads and 

 shoulders of the unoffending crowd in a manner that 

 was truly startling to witness. He carried a long hazel 

 wand for the express purpose, and he used it like a 

 fiend. At the same time he poured forth upon them 

 a torrent of abuse. " Whose dogs are you, to stand 

 in the road of the favoured guests of the Prince 1 ?" 

 " Bah bideh / " Give way ; " " Your fathers' 

 graves are defiled;" "Your mothers are burnt." 

 And with every downward blow, he roared out a 

 goorumsauk, a word it is best to leave untrans- 

 lated, as it sounds far more sonorous in the Persian 

 than in the English language. As our knees and our 

 horses' chests pushed a road through the sea of heads, 

 I observed an old wizen-faced man with a long grey 

 beard. From the make of his clothes and his dark 

 face, I saw at once he was a native of India. He had 

 perched himself on the ledge of a stall of the bazaar. 

 As we approached, he defiantly slapped his breast, and 

 shrieked out in Hindustani that he had just arrived 

 from Lucknow, and that he had seen the English, 



