ISPAHAN TO TEHERAN. 
181 
After having refreshed our cattle and ourselves, we made preparations 
to depart at ten o’clock. The night was very dark, and our Mehman - 
dar (who had not shewn an inclination to second our desires of 
proceeding with all dispatch) now opposed every difficulty which he 
could devise: he expatiated on the danger of undertaking the journey 
by night, and talked of certain passes on the road, where travellers 
had been lost and never more heard of. He was in fact an old man, 
unaccustomed to the activity of our proceedings. Yet he was not the 
only one, who was disappointed and surprised at the celerity of our 
movements. 
The chiefs of the tent-pitchers and of the muleteers, who had at¬ 
tended former missions, had passed months on the road, and thus 
secured a profit on the pay of their people and their mules, which the 
shortness of our engagement greatly reduced. Our journies were 
compared with the celebrated marches of their late King Aga Ma¬ 
homed Khan, who waged so many wars with Lootf Ali Kiian s 
but those, who considered it incompatible with the dignity of a 
great man to move fast, said that we were rather choppers (couriers) 
than Embassadors. Yet the greatest distance that we ever travelled in 
one day was forty miles, and we employed thirty-five days in a 
journey of about six hundred and fifty miles, at an average perhaps of 
nineteen miles a day. 
When we were unmoved by his forebodings, our Mehmandar endea¬ 
voured to sooth us into compliance to his wishes, by sending us a 
variety of savoury dishes for our dinner, which however only renewed 
our spirits, and increased our eagerness to proceed. We accordingly 
mounted our horses. The troop had already advanced with much of 
our baggage. The Envoy (preceded by two people, who by courtesy 
were called guides, and followed by the Mehmandar and the gentlemen 
of the suite) had not travelled half a mile from the caravanserai , when 
his conductors declared that they had lost the road. After long and 
fruitless exertion, bewildered more and more by those who had under¬ 
taken our direction, we resolved to return to the caravanserai , and to 
