A ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan (1891) (14761419246)

Identifier: ridetoindiaacros00dewirich (find matches)
Title: A ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan
Year: 1891 (1890s)
Authors: De Windt, Harry, 1856-1933
Subjects: India -- Description and travel Iran -- Description and travel Balochistan (Pakistan) -- Description and travel
Publisher: London, Chapman and Hall, limited
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN



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order, and is armedwith the Berdan rifle. The Teheran bazaar is, at first sight, common-place and uninteresting. Though of enormousextent (it contains in the daytime over thirtythousand souls), it lacks the picturesque Orientalappearance of those of Cairo or Constantinople,where costly and beautiful wares are set out intempting array before the eyes of the unwarystranger. Here they are kept in the background,and a European must remain in the place for acouple of months or so, and make friends withthe merchants, before he be even permitted tosee them. The position is reversed. At Stam-boul the stranger is pestered and worried to buy ;at Teheran one must sometimes entreat beforebeing allowed even to inspect the contents of asilk or jewel stall. Even then, the owner willprobably remain supremely indifferent as towhether the Farangi purchase or not. Thisfact is curious. It will probably disappear withthe advance of civilization and Mr. Cook. Debouching from the principal streets or alleys
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TEHERAN, 85 of the bazaar, which is of brick, are large coveredcaravanserais, or open spaces for the storage ofgoods, where the wholesale merchants have theirwarehouses. The architecture of some of thesecaravanserais is very fine. The cool, quiet halls,their domed roofs, embellished with delicatestone carving, and blue, white, and yellow tiles,dimly reflected in the inevitable marble tank ofclear water below, are a pleasant retreat from thestifling alleys and sun-baked streets. Talkingof tanks, there seems to be no lack of water inTeheran. I was surprised at this, for there arefew countries so deficient in this essential com-modity as Persia. It is, I found, artificially sup-plied by connaughts, or subterranean aqueductsflowing from mountain streams, which are practi-cally inexhaustible. In order to keep a straio-htline, shafts are dug every fifty yards or so, andthe earth thrown out of the shaft forms a mound,which is not removed. Thus a Persian landscape,dotted with hundreds of thes