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CHAPTER X. 
Having heard that the King was on his return to Teheran from his camp 
at Sultanieh, on the 14th of October we departed from Saadatabad^ 
and crossing the city encamped on an open space to the north of it. Our 
perambulator gave the distance of the march as five miles, nearly three 
of which we traversed under vaulted bazars. We passed a week in this 
place, during which time, owing to the change of air, our sick mended 
apace. A small interval of hot weather brought our Indians about 
immediately, but as soon as the cold again began to be felt they re¬ 
lapsed. An army of Indians in the winters of the north of Persia, 
would be totally unfit for service in the field. 
On the 21st of October, accompanied by Mahomed Beg as our Meh- 
mandar, we reached Gez, and the next day Morchekhord. Mirza Abul 
Hassan Khan, who was also to have been of the party, was kept back 
one day at Ispahan by the astrologers, who detained him for a happy 
conjunction of the planets. He rejoined us a few days after.* 
On our arrival at Morchekhord the Ambassador was received by the 
the son of the Thaubet, a young man of about five and twenty. 
When the King passed by this village last year, on his road to Ispahan, 
the old Thaubet exhibited a scene of adulation which was disgusting 
even to the Persians. He stripped his son naked from the waist up¬ 
wards, tied his hands behind his back, and lifted up a large knife, as if 
in the act of cutting his throat, just at the moment when the King 
passed, and at the same time offered his son as a sacrifice, in terms 
such as are only used to the Deity. “ If I had been the King,” said 
one of our Persian companions, “ I would have cried out bekoush, he- 
koush, kill, kill.” 
As we travelled the very same road that Sir Harford Jones did, it is 
* See 2 Kings, iv. 23. “ Wherefore wilt thou go to him to-day ? it is neither new moon, 
nor sabbath.” 
