46 
DEPARTURE FROM BUSHIRE. 
Our long delay at Bushire was occasioned by some discussions on the 
appointment of a Mehmandar, an officer of indispensable necessity in 
a country where there are no public inns, and little safety on the roads, 
for strangers. He acts at once as commissary, guard, and guide; and 
also very much in the same capacity as Tissaphernes, who in conducting 
the ten thousand Greeks through Persia, besides providing markets for 
them, was also a watch upon them, and a reporter to the king of all 
their actions.* 
The appointment of a Mehmandar to an Ambassador in eastern 
countries is always a matter of etiquette; and the degree of conse¬ 
quence in which the said Ambassador and the Court whence he comes 
is held, is supposed to be announced by the rank of the person who 
is appointed to attend upon him. The man nominated to conduct us 
to Shiraz was Mahomed Zeky Khan, favourite of the Prince, Governor 
of Fars. After our arrival there, it was settled that a person of greater 
consequence was to be sent direct from the King, to conduct us to 
Teheran. 
It is against Persian etiquette to proceed before the arrival of the 
appointed Mehmandar, and we remained long in expectation of the 
arrival of Mahomed Zeky Khan. At length, finding that he did not 
appear, and wearied by the united discomforts of heat, wind, and dust, 
the Ambassador determined to proceed without him, and requested the 
Governor of Bushire to accompany him. Here was afiother occasion 
for the late Persian Envoy to vent his ill-will towards Mahomed Nebee 
Khan; and he did not lose the smallest opportunity of making the 
Governor foresee all the miseries that were likely to fall upon him and 
his family, owing to the ill-treatment which the English Ambassador 
had received since his arrival. 
At length, on the 27th of March, our camp broke up from Bushire, 
and we proceeded onwards by small journies to Shiraz, keeping exactly 
the same route as that travelled by Sir Harford Jones, and all the late 
English embassies. We found the heat intense; and the day we 
* Zenophon, Anabasis, lib. 2 . c. 4. 
