PERSIAN CARAVAN SKETCHES 



465 



cleanliness and are hundreds of miles 

 from the nearest doctor. For eight days 

 a peasant from Yezdikhast attached him- 

 self to our caravan. I wondered at first 

 whether he was starting out on some 

 pilgrimage, but I learned later that he 

 was walking some 180 miles and back to 

 get some leeches for a rich and promi- 

 nent citizen of his town who was des- 

 perately ill, but who most probably did 

 not need leeches at all. But I digress 

 from the incident at Gabarabad. 



An old man came pleading to us, call- 

 ing loudly on Allah the Merciful for a 

 miracle. He was almost blind with 

 cataracts on both eyes. I tried to explain 

 that there was nothing we could do for 

 him, but he followed us and sat outside 

 our hut, howling pitifully, calling strenu- 

 ously for the mercy of Allah. Our cara- 

 van had to move on that night. We 

 needed sleep. So, finally, thoroughly 

 annoyed, as we could not persuade him 

 to leave and wishing to give the old man 

 at least one peaceful night, I poured out 

 a large dose from a bottle and gave it 

 to him. 



"You will see in the morning," I said. 

 The label on the bottle was "castor oil." 



"th£ paths of glory lead but to the 

 grave" 



Three famous historical sites lie on 

 this caravan route: Pasargadse, where 

 the only building left intact is the tomb 

 of Cyrus (page 446) ; Naksh-i Rustam, 

 where the tremendous tombs of the 

 Achsemenian kings and Sassanian carv- 

 ings are cut in the face of a great cliff 

 (see Color Plate XIII), and Persepolis. 

 All of these are so well known, have been 

 so adequately described by every archae- 

 ologist and famous writer who has visited 

 Persia since the days of Marco Polo, that 

 I hesitate to attempt even a brief sketch 

 of how the most important of all Persian 

 ruins, Persepolis, looks today (see illus- 

 tration, page 448). 



As the traveler crosses the plain of 

 Mervdasht, the slender columns of Per- 

 sepolis grow steadily taller and more dis- 

 tinct. The ruins lie on a great platform 

 built out from the promontory of a 

 mountain range. The stately palaces of 

 Darius, Xerxes, and Artaxerxes, once 

 wonders of the world, can still be clearly 



distinguished, and many of the great 

 stone architraves and portals, sumptu- 

 ously covered with bas-relief, are stand- 

 ing today, lonely but vividly impressive 

 ruins, as left after they were destroyed 

 in that tremendous bonfire set by the 

 torch of Alexander the Great in drunken 

 celebration of victory (Color Plate I). 



Far more interesting to me than the 

 ruins of Babylon or Assur, Persepolis is 

 preeminently satisfactory in giving still 

 a graphic idea of the vast scale of the 

 buildings, in possessing astonishing bits 

 of bas-relief as clear as the day they 

 were hewn from the stone, and, above 

 all, in leaving enough intact so that the 

 imagination can without difficulty span 

 the great gaps from high-flung column 

 top to column top, raise the fallen fluted 

 pillars, and resurrect the former glory of 

 those world-famed palace halls. 



Would that the glory and ambition that 

 once was Persia's had not so completely 

 disappeared ! In the character of the 

 Persian peoples today, except for a hand- 

 ful of enlightened radicals, there is little 

 trace of their ancient heritage. To sense 

 the grandeur of the days of the Achae- 

 menian kings, of the leadership and 

 power of the Persian Empire that was, 

 is not, and may never again be, one must 

 turn to the silent and neglected ruins of 

 Persepolis. 



After threading caravan roads under 

 barren mountains, across the desert 

 plateau, sweltering days in filthy cara- 

 vanserais, nights under the stars when 

 the monotony was broken only by the 

 mystical sound of caravan bells passing 

 in the darkness, the first sight of the 

 emerald island of Shiraz against the blue- 

 violet hills is so impressive that one 

 unconsciously exclaims. Allahii Akbar 

 (God is Most Great). Thus we first saw 

 Shiraz, with its rows of dark cypress 

 and the turquoise domes of mosques, 

 coming through the Koran Gate into the 

 city from the north (see Color Plate 

 XV), and our eyes continued to behold 

 far greater beauty in this squalid town 

 than it deserved, for it came to mean a 

 week's rest in the British consulate 

 garden (see pages 450, 454, and 455). 



I must leave to the imagination our 

 visit to the tomb of Hafiz, the best-loved 

 poet in Persia, and a week full of enter- 



