The Cultivation Of This
Plant Is Yearly Increasing In Persia, For There Is An Enormous Demand
For The Drug In The Country Itself, To Say Nothing Of The Export
Market, The Value Of Which, In 1871, Was 696,000 Rupees.
In 1881 it
had progressed to 8,470,000 rupees, and is steadily increasing every
year.
Opium is not smoked in Persia, but is taken in the form of
pills. Many among the upper classes take it daily, the dose being a
grain to a grain and a half.
We covered, the first day out from Ispahan, nearly a hundred miles
between sunrise and 10 p.m. - not bad work for Persia. A little after
dark, and before the moon had risen, I was cantering easily along in
front of Gerome, when a violent blow on the chest, followed by another
between the eyes, sent me reeling off my horse on to the sand. My
first thought, on collecting myself, was "Robbers!" - this part of the
road bearing an unpleasant reputation. Cocking my revolver, I called
to Gerome, and was answered by a volley of oaths, while another
riderless horse galloped past me and disappeared in the darkness.
Our foe was a harmless one. The wind had blown down one of the
telegraph-posts, and the wires had done the mischief. By good luck and
the aid of lucifer matches, we managed to trace our ponies to a piece
of cultivated ground hard by, where we found them calmly feeding in a
field of standing corn.
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