By The Track Bloomed Wild Flowers, Violets And Narcissus,
Shedding Their Fresh Delicate Perfume.
The song of birds and hum of
insects filled the air, bright butterflies flashed across our path,
while the soft distant notes of a cuckoo recalled shady country lanes
and the sunlit hay-fields of an English summer.
It was like coming
from the grave, after the sterile deserts and bleak desolate plains of
Northern Persia.
There is a small square building at the northern end of the Kotal
Doktar, a mud hut, in which are stationed a guard of soldiers to be
of assistance in the event of robbery of caravans or travellers. Such
cases are not infrequent. Upon our approach, three men armed with
flint-locks and long iron pikes accosted us. "We are the escort," said
one, apparently the leader, from the bar of rusty gold braid on his
sleeve. "You cannot go on alone. It is not safe." We then learnt that
a large lion had infested the caravan-track over the pass for some
days, and had but yesterday attacked the mail and carried off one of
the mules, the native in charge only just escaping by climbing a tree.
Persian travel is full of these little surprises or rather items of
news; for one must be of a very ingenuous disposition to be surprised
at anything after a journey of any length in that country. If the man
had said that an ichthyosaurus or dodo barred the way, I should have
believed him just as much.
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