Nor Will He, On Any
Account, Start On A Journey On A Friday, Or The Thirteenth Day Of The
Month.
The palace of Teheran is, seen from the outside, a shapeless,
ramshackle structure.
The outside walls are whitewashed, and covered
with gaudy red and blue pictures of men and horses, the former in
modern military tunics and shakos, the latter painted a bright red.
The figures, rudely drawn, remind one of a charity schoolboy's
artistic efforts on a slate, but are somewhat out of place on the
walls of a royal residence. The interior of the "Ark," as it is
called, is a pleasant contrast to the outside, although even here, in
the museum, which contains some of the finest gems and _objets d'art_
in the world, the various objects are placed with singular disregard
of order, not to say good taste. One sees, for instance, a tawdrily
dressed mechanical doll from Paris standing next to a case containing
the "Darai Nor," or "Sea of Light," a magnificent diamond obtained
in India, and said to be the largest yet discovered, though somewhat
inferior in quality to the "Koh-i-noor." A cheap and somewhat
dilapidated cuckoo-clock and toy velocipede flank the famous globe of
the world in diamonds and precious stones. This, the most costly and
beautiful piece of workmanship in the place, is about eighteen inches
in diameter, and is said to have cost eight millions of francs. The
different countries are marked out with surprising accuracy and
detail, - Persia being represented by turquoises, England by diamonds,
Africa by rubies, and so on, the sea being of emeralds.
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