Captain Gill was
murdered by natives with Professor Palmer near Suez, and Captain
Clayton killed while playing polo in India.]
CHAPTER V.
TEHERAN.
A brilliant ball-room, pretty faces, smart gowns, good music, and
an excellent supper; - thus surrounded, I pass my first evening in
Teheran, a pleasant contrast indeed to the preceding night of dirt,
cold, and hunger.
But it was not without serious misgivings that I accepted the
courteous invitation of the German Embassy. The crossing of the
Kharzan had not improved the appearance of dress-clothes and shirts,
to say nothing of my eyes being in the condition described by
pugilists as "bunged up," my face of the hue of a boiled lobster, the
effects of sun and snow.
One is struck, on entering Teheran, with the apparent cleanliness of
the place as compared with other Oriental towns. The absence of heaps
of refuse, cess-pools, open drains, and bad smells is remarkable to
one accustomed to Eastern cities; but this was perhaps, at the time of
my visit, due to the pure rarified atmosphere, the keen frosty air, of
winter. Teheran in January, with its cold bracing climate, and Teheran
in June, with the thermometer above ninety in the shade, are two very
different things; and the town is so unhealthy in summer, that all
Europeans who can afford to do so live on the hills around the
capital.
The environs are not picturesque. They have been likened to those of
Madrid, having the same brown calcined soil, the same absence of trees
and vegetation.
