Suddenly, While We Were At Dinner, A Bell Was
Heard, And The Half-Caste Clerk Entered.
"So-and-so of Shiraz," naming
an official, "wants to speak to you." "All right," replied G - - .
"Just tell him to wait till I've finished my cheese!"
"It's from F - - ," he said, a few moments later, "to say he expects
you to make his house your head-quarters at Shiraz." So the stranger
is passed on through this desert, but hospitable land. Persian
travel would be hard indeed were it not for the ever-open doors and
hospitality of the telegraph officials.
We continue our journey next day in summer weather - almost too hot,
in the middle of the day, to be pleasant. Sheepskin and bourka are
dispensed with, as we ride lazily along under a blazing sun through
pleasant green plains of maize and barley, irrigated by babbling
brooks of crystal-clear water. A few miles from Abadeh is a
cave-village built into the side of a hill. From this issue a number
of repulsive-looking, half-naked wretches, men and women, with dark
scowling faces, and dirty masses of coarse black hair. Most are
covered with skin-disease, so we push on ahead, but are caught up, for
the loathsome creatures get over the ground with extraordinary speed.
A handful of "sheis" [A] stops them, and we leave them swearing,
struggling, and fighting for the coins in a cloud of dust. Then on
again past villages nestling in groves of mulberry trees, past more
vineyards, maize, and barley, and peasants in picturesque blue dress
(save white, no other colour is worn in summer by the country-people)
working in the fields.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 111 of 226
Words from 29100 to 29379
of 60127
