36 
RESIDENCE OE THE MISSION AT BUSHIRE. 
the Minister at Shiraz , replete with compliment and inquiries about 
health, and entrusted to the care of Aga Mahomed Ali, one of the 
Prince's servants, who received for himself from the Envoy a present of 
five hundred piastres. The great men profit by these opportunities of 
enriching by such returns any servant to whom in their own persons 
they may owe an obligation, and to whom they thus, cheaply to them¬ 
selves, repay it. But the charge of a present is frequently made the 
matter of a bargain among the adherents of the donor, and perhaps is 
sometimes purchased directly from the great man himself. 
On the 13th of Nov. we were informed, that a Mehmandar had been 
appointed by the court to escort the Envoy to Teheran. The title of 
Mehmandar has been familiarized to an English reader by His Majesty's 
appointment of Sir Gore Ouse ley to fill the station during the resi¬ 
dence in England of Mirza Abul II ass an, late Envoy Extraordinary 
from the King of Persia to the Court of London. But the duties 
which, in England, the most active Mehmandar could comprize within 
his office are comparatively very limited to those which are indispensably 
attached to a similar station in Persia. The Mehmandar is the Super- 
intendant and Purveyor assigned to the dignity and ease of foreign 
Embassadors; the relative facility, therefore, with which lie can dis¬ 
charge these functions must vary of course with the state of society 
in different countries. In England money procures every accommoda¬ 
tion ; but money alone can procure it now: purveyance, however, in 
its feudal sense, unfortunately for the people, still exists in its full 
force in Persia; and the Mehmandar , under the commission of his Sove¬ 
reign, is entitled to demand from the provinces through which he passes 
every article in every quantity rvhich he may deem expedient for his 
mission. And as there is no public accommodation on the road where, 
at every hour as in England, these supplies may be procured, they are 
extorted from the private stores of the villagers. Besides every requi¬ 
site of provision and conveyance, the firman of the Mehmandar some¬ 
times includes even specie among the articles thus necessary in the 
passage. It is not, therefore, wonderful, that the officer entrusted with. 
