PERSIAN CARAVAN SKETCHES 



445 



is that it continually reveals glorious un- 

 expected contrasts : the cool green of a 

 garden breaking the barren iridescent 

 plain; the sight of a majestic snow peak 

 when you are plodding through dust and 

 sand at no° in the shade; brilliantly 

 chiseled bas - reliefs on an abandoned 

 mountain side ; the shimmering, opales- 

 cent dome of a mosque soaring above a 

 drab city of crumbling mud-built houses. 



THE MYSTERY OF A PERSIAN DAWN AND 

 THE SINGING CARAVAN BEETS 



I had not suspected that the lumbering 

 post- wagon would be the means of first 

 revealing to us the subtle wonders of 

 nights of caravan, moving on the desert 

 Persian plateau as on a silent, limitless 

 sea, under the stars — oh, stars of Persia ! 

 nowhere else are there such stars ! 



The dawn disclosed a huge caravan 

 coming up the long, undulating slope of 

 the plateau out of the night. The vari- 

 toned bells of the camels dinging and 

 donging, first sounded like distant bugle 

 calls or lurking snatches of some for- 

 gotten orchestral rhapsody brought to us 

 by the breeze. The high notes blended 

 in a constant ripple of lucid tones, while 

 the plodding "thung, thung" of the low, 

 rich-toned bells of the leaders could be 

 heard, fainter but still distinct, even after 

 the last of the caravan had disappeared 

 over the brow of the hill. 



Slowly they went by, some 500 camels 

 in all, with Afghan and Baluchi drivers 

 loping along by their beasts or bobbing 

 sleepily high up on a perilous nest among 

 bales of merchandise. One thought of 

 Vansittart's : 



"Ding ! dong ; 

 Fugitive throng. 

 Out of the dark 

 Into the night, 

 Silent and lonely, 

 Gone ! — the bells only 

 Tell us a caravan once was in sight." 



Suddenly the sun, a pale gold disk, 

 broke the rim of the horizon and outlined 

 the sharp conical pearl-gray peak of 

 Mount Demavend just to the north of it 

 and fully 120 miles away (see also text, 

 pages 393-400). Then I first fully real- 

 ized the grandeur, the godliness, of its 

 nineteen thousand feet of height. Half 

 an hour later this vision was lost. 



The sun rode high above the nearer 

 barren ranges and the horizon was wrapt 

 in the usual all-enveloping dust and heat 

 haze rising from the desert hit, the deso- 

 late salt swamps beyond. 



KASHAN, FAMOUS FOR HEAT, SCORPIONS, 

 RUGS, AND OTHER THINGS 



At Kashan, the reputed home of the 

 Wise Men of the East who set out for 

 Bethlehem, we waited two days for the 

 next mail stage. The heat, for one accus- 

 tomed to the 120 in the shade of "Ales- 

 pot," was not remarkable; the eight-inch 

 scorpions ; I suppose, slept under the 

 many layers of dust ; the rugs were in the 

 hands of profiteers, judging by the prices ; 

 Mohammedan " Salvationists" made the 

 narrow, arched passageways of the ba- 

 zaars reverberate with their wails and 

 discoursed to a sleepy rabble — these and 

 a reputation for cowardice are the claims 

 of Kashan for renown. 



Let Kashan and the remaining hundred 

 miles by mail stage sleep with the scor- 

 pions ; for the reader will begin to think 

 those much-harassed brigands were only 

 a smoke screen, anyway, to lure him to 

 disillusion — "the man who has seen the 

 most of the world is — ." So we will 

 jump down to the refreshing home of a 

 mission doctor in Ispahan, plunge into a 

 bath, and go out to look for those illusive 

 robbers. 



THE FATE OF THE CAPTURED BRIGANDS 



While walking out to photograph the 

 turquoise-domed Shah Abbas Mosque, 

 the morning after our arrival, we were 

 startled by the sound of a bugle. A 

 crowd congested the narrow street. Soon 

 a company of white fur-capped Persian 

 police swung into view. In their center 

 marched a tall, gaunt, black-bearded man 

 with hands bound behind his back. It 

 was one of the captured brigands being 

 taken to the great central square to be 

 hanged. 



Seven men were hanged the day before, 

 we were told, and nearly two hundred 

 more were to be disposed of that way. 

 They were the leaders of the band that 

 for ten years had terrorized the roads 

 and villages around Ispahan. We had 

 passed villages roofless and deserted 

 that they had plundered. Hundreds of 



