Astara (Though The
Port Of Tabriz) Is An Insignificant Place, Its Sole Importance Lying
In The Fact That It Is A Frontier Town.
On one side of the narrow
river a collection of ramshackle mud huts, neglected gardens, foul
smells, beggars, and
Dogs - Persia; on the other, a score of neat stone
houses, well-kept roads and paths, flower-gardens, orchards, a pretty
church, and white fort surrounded by the inevitable black-and-white
sentry-boxes, guarded by a company of white-capped Cossacks - Russia. I
could not help realizing, on landing at Astara, the huge area of this
vast empire. How many thousand miles now separated me from the last
border town of the Great White Czar that I visited - Kiakhta, on the
Russo-Chinese frontier?
Surrounded by a ragged mob, we walked to the village to see about
horses and a lodging for the night. The latter was soon found - a
flat-roofed mud hut about thirty feet square, devoid of chimney or
furniture of any kind. The floor, cracked in several places, was
crawling with vermin, and the walls undermined with rat-holes; but in
Persia one must not be particular. Leaving our baggage in the care of
one "Hassan," a bright-eyed, intelligent-looking lad, and instructing
him to prepare a meal, we made for the bazaar, a hundred yards away,
through a morass, knee deep in mud and abomination of all kinds, to
procure food.
A row of thirty or forty mud huts composed the "bazaar," where, having
succeeded in purchasing tea, bread, eggs, and caviar, we turned our
attention to horseflesh.
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