The Poor Shagird, Whom We Had To
Threaten With A Severe Chastisement If He Did Not Accompany Us, Was In
A Terrible State.
The bow-string was the least he could expect when
the khan came to know of the trick we had played him.
An extra keran
at Sin-Sin, however, soon consoled our guide. He probably never
returned to Pasingan at all, but sought his fortunes elsewhere.
Persian post-boys are not particular.
Kashan is distant about fifty-two English miles from Pasingan, and
lies south-east of the latter. The caravan track passes a level tract
of country, sparsely cultivated by means of irrigation. Persian soil
is evidently of the kind that, "tickled with a hoe, laughs with a
harvest." Even in this sterile desert, covered for the most part with
white salt deposits, the little oases of grain and garden looked as
fresh and green as though they had been on the banks of a lake or
river. But the green patches were very few and far between, and,
half-way between the post-stations, ceased altogether. Nothing was
then visible but a waste of brown mud and yellow sand, cut clear and
distinct against the blue sky-line on the horizon. It is strange, when
crossing such tracts of country, to note how near to one everything
seems. Objects six or eight miles off, looked to-day as if you could
gallop up to them in five minutes; and the peak of Demavend, on which
we were now looking our last, seemed about twenty miles off, instead
of over one hundred and fifty.
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