effort to all, and specially so to me at my age. I have ridden twenty-eight miles to-day, yesterday twenty-four, and sixteen the day before the first day out of Ispahan, accompanied by Dr. Bruce, from whom I parted early yesterday morning, and from his little family the morning before. As it is getting warmer I start at 4 each morning, with the very first blush of daylight, and lose no time on the way. I got in at 8 this morning, after four and a half hours of pretty quick riding, stopping only half of an hour on the way to change horses and drink a cup of milk. To-morrow, after a twenty miles' ride, I hope to stay one and a half days for Sunday in a place of groves and streams 8,000 feet above the sea. Martyn describes it as Karoo, though the real name is Kohrood (mountain-streams). I shall be very thankful for this little rest, as the three next marches are rather severe, and there is a sudden descent to warmer regions, from 8,000 to 3,000 feet in one day's march. To-day and yesterday I am reminded much more of Indian heat and languor than I have been hitherto, yet happily it seems the actual heat of India is never attained, at least in these parts of Persia; and Mrs. Bruce says it has been quite exceptionally a late hot season through continuance of showers till about a fortnight ago.

"Kohrood, May 26. This march was accomplished by about 8 a.m., being nearly twenty-four miles. We threaded our way through a strangely wild labyrinth of mountains almost the whole march, snowdrifts here and there reminding us that we were passing through highlands. We met several large kafilas, or caravans, mostly of pilgrims to and fro from the sacred city of Koom, at which we expect to halt one night next week. They are drawn from all quarters by the saintly repute of a certain lady named Fatima (not Mohammed's relative of that name, I believe), whose ashes and tomb are supposed to possess a great merit and healing power, and ability to grant all kind of boons to the gifts and prayers of suppliants, as our lady of Lourdes and others. It is of course famed for the intense bigotry and bitter zeal of the moollahs who congregate there and live on the alms of the faithful.

'Kohrood is a striking place certainly, nestled in the heart of the hills, and rough as the screes of Westmoreland. Looked at from above it must appear like a picture of Paradise, set in a framework of white, grey, and purple hills, to give it effect by the contrast of utter barrenness with loveliest verdure, and of dreary silence with the murmur of perennial cool, sweet rivulets. The trees are spreading and shadowy like English forest trees, and the whole scene seems to have affected Martyn as the likest thing that he had seen to English landscape since he first quitted Cornwall. The climate too is more English than [that] of any hill-stations I have visited in India. . . The valley, though not very broad, is of considerable length. . . Wheat crops of richest green come close up to the enclosure of the caravanserai.

KASHAN AND KOOM

83

'Strange to say this large village, whose houses rise tier above tier along the lofty hillside, with little groups of trees interspersed, has no moollah, so the people seem drawn with much simplicity towards receiving the Book of Life. I suggested to them that they should make one of themselves moollah, and get him to read Psalms, Prophets, and Gospel. It seems a strangely unlooked-for privilege to be allowed in these Persian villages, so hopelessly out of my beat before, to be heard and understood even by some of the poor, as well as by the educated. I think you will feel rewarded. . . for having spared me these two months for such a work's sake. I have spent the whole evening in this work, and seem to have banished a headache by this unusual medicine'. . . .

'Kashan, May 28. This is a very ancient city with wealthy merchants, and moollahs, and fine buildings (coloured and domed in some cases), and six or seven miles of garden, which one sees some nine or ten miles before reaching it. I was sorely worn out with the twenty-eight miles' ride this morning, about twelve of which had to be walked over, as the road was strewn sometimes with loose stones, and at others with round and pointed stones lodged deep in clay soil, which are terrible for horses. The last part of the road was terribly exposed to fiery sunshine. I was thankful to get in without a sun-stroke, but I had lumps of ice at once applied to my head, which relieved it wonderfully. We started at 3 a.m. and reached Kashan about 9.30. I rather dread the next few days, but hope to avoid such perilous exposure. I had no idea three farasangs had to be laboriously walked over, two or two and a half miles an hour, else we should have started earlier than 3. But even 3 a.m., day by day, is rather wearing. The stay at Ispahan has made my journey over these hot plains a little too late. .. I had the Holy Communion this evening with some of the party. This is a great place for silk handkerchiefs, gold and silver inlaid in copper, glass, and most delicately wrought laces.'

Koom (four marches south from Teheran), June 1. MY DEAREST BASIL,

This city, with its beautiful domes and richly coloured mosques, is one of the most corrupt cities in Persia. I am

.

1 Yet by the poor the bishop was not always understood. Dr. Bruce relates how one day he heard him trying to explain to his gholam, or servant, the Indian custom of taking on one of the horses in the middle of the night to a stage halfway in advance upon the next day's march. French addressed him in words which may be roughly paraphrased as follows:-'Gholam! conduct my steed into the way of truth at at midnight, and I will make my exodus (departure out of life) to-morrow morning.' The poor man gazed at him in blank amaze till Dr. Bruce explained.

6

told that as bad as a Koomi' is proverbial all the country over'. There seems no hope of getting any entrance for the Gospel; every door is double-locked, and Satan holds his goods

in peace.

June 2. However, Yuhannes found out that the mujtahid bought, and has in his possession, a New Testament, and a moollah has for sale in Koom an Old and New Testament. One always hopes there are some better and brighter points about popularly decried places. From the 27th to the 31st inclusive we rode just a hundred miles by postal reckoning, and to-day (2nd) we have added twenty-eight more miles; but seventy-two still remain to Teheran, which we hope to accomplish by the morning of the 5th. Here for the first time the grand and glorious Demavend range, with its broad dimensions and vast snow glaciers, burst upon me. I imagine this to be quite one of the finest snowy range prospects in the world. Clouds have hid it for two days, since we left Kashan, from whence it is visible often. One remembers how often one has puzzled poor boys in their geography with this range, and now we are face to face with it. I don't think, since we were at the top of Pilatus, I ever have seen a sight equal to this. Yesterday we rested the whole day (which was very refreshing) with a young, unsophisticated Englishman, who is telegraph clerk at Koom. I had prayer and Bible-reading twice with him, and he thanked me warmly for the refreshment he had found from the visit. It is a privilege to search out these desolate outcasts in their lonely posts. He seemed to feel that for the next three months he should see nobody, even in by-passing-be almost buried alive, in fact. One would like to deal with crowds perhaps, but God sometimes sends one to a poor solitary youth to try to help and comfort him. Lacordaire, whose Lettres à des Jeunes Gens, I have read with much profit a second time this last month, speaks so strikingly of Cette onction que Dieu donne ordinairement à ceux qui le servent dans la simplicité et l'humilité sans regarder à la petitesse ou à la grandeur des charges, grandeur qui n'est qu'illusoire quand elle vient du monde et non pas du ciel.'

6

This book of Lacordaire's, with Henry Martyn's Life, have been great helps to me; yet what wonderful difference of character in them, alike in this that they were deep, patient, loving, scriptural students, and both had had a sight of God (after which, Lacordaire says, nothing in the world seems to have surpassing and absorbing beauty), and an insight from early years into the power and glory and beauty of the cross of Christ. A small edition of Augustine's Confessions, and a delightful little book of Canon

1 The exact proverb, as Mr. Curzon gives it, has something of doubleedged satire: 'A Kashan dog is better than a Koom noble, albeit a dog is better than a man of Kashan.'

KOOM TO HOUZ-SULTAN

85

Tristram on The Holy Places, have also gone with me and given me very pleasant thoughts.

June 3 (Sunday). The heat of the sun almost knocked me down yesterday, but a large potter's urn full of cold water thrown over my head restored me, thank God. Such large white pottery is made in Koom. For once in a way I was compelled to take a small stage this morning, fifteen miles, but we got in about sunrise, or soon after 5.30 a.m., starting about 3. We rode over a great salt waste, with briny pools here and there, reminding me forcibly of that passage, 'He shall inhabit the parched places of the wilderness, in a salt land and not inhabited.' This restingplace (called Houz-Sultan) is called the finest caravanserai in Persia, but I don't think that is correct now, for it is crowded with travellers and their beasts of all kinds; nor has it any tanks or fine buildings within, or apartments for the higher classes. We take refuge in a quiet rest-house near at hand, where there is no crowd, or hustle-bustle at least, and we can have our quiet service. At Koom, on the tops of all the sacred domes, a large stork, called 'haji laglag,' builds its round spacious nest of large sticks every spring; on some of the domes in tiers one above the other, like the houses in Yazdegast I described in one of my letters. They are birds of presence,' and present quite a fine figure stalking over the domes. 'Laglag' is the ordinary word for stork, and 'haji' means pilgrim, to express the pious objects of these birds, apparently, in choosing the tops of holy tombs. Mr. B., my host at Koom, has two of these birds with two young on the top of a badgeer (wind-catcher) in his house. They come annually to build and rear there, the same pair; when the birds are fledged, in June or July, they fly off to cooler and greener parts of Persia, and are not seen again till the spring. He says they seem quite company to him. They feed on snakes, mice, frogs, &c., out of the gardens.

6

I think I advised you once before (as my own beloved father did me) to study the great orators of our country: Pitt, Burke, Wilberforce, &e. It is such a pity that so few of our clergy devote time to this, as their pulpit ministry would often (under God) be so much more effective and persuasive, and they would be such a power for God often. On the platform too and in the schoolroom their influence would be so much more felt.

I am your very loving father,

THOS. V. Lahore.

P.S.-Perhaps your cousin Stewart might care to see this roughly and badly written letter; but one writes with so many disadvantages-oppressive heat, and with no chair or table. A group in the caravanserai has been fairly well trying to take in some of the ground truths of the Gospel. One highly educated man wishes to buy the whole Bible. May God bless it!

Surely the men are not many who could have written such a letter under such circumstances of fatigue and inconvenience. A few days later, on June 7, he wrote to Mrs. French from Teheran :

'As the multitude of pilgrims and merchant-travellers was very large in an adjoining caravanserai (at Houz Sultan), I got some rather interesting preaching, and on the next day also at a place called Kinareh Gird, both mentioned in Martyn, only the former he calls Hour Sultania instead of Houz Sultan, the present name at least. Mr. Sargent probably misread him; not a single place the whole route along but is mis-spelt. The ride on Monday, for twenty-eight miles, was through the most doleful and desolate region I ever beheld, I think, except it were a part of the Bolan and its approaches. It seemed seamed or scarred with the wrinkled letter-marks or death-marks of some ancient curse; not a drop of water or blade of grass from end to end, only scoriae, and rifts, and jagged weird rocks cropping up, with dry water-courses looking deceitful as Job describes them. It is this stage that is properly called the "Valley of the Angel of Death." I missed some friends, who came to welcome me at the Teheran gate, by getting in before I was expected, as I scarcely hoped to reach before 8; but it was a full hour or so earlier, as I had a capital horse for the first twenty miles. We were six miles riding in and around Teheran before we got to the house. Colonel Smith and his brother-in-law, Dr. Baker, joined me shortly afterwards, and Colonel S. took me on to his country residence, six or seven miles off, right under the root of the Elburz, streaked above with glaciers, which all melt, however, in the very hottest weather. Not so Demavend, some thirty or forty miles to the right, which is 7,000 or 8,000 feet higher, and is one of the grandest steeps imaginable, a broadish cone rising far above its compeers.'

Colonel Smith (now Sir R. Murdoch Smith) had been the excavator of the Carian marbles at Halicarnassus for the British Museum, and at Cyrene on his own account. Better than that,' said the bishop, he seems the centre of all good here and in the neighbourhood.' The bishop had intended to push on quickly, but a strain, or perhaps an attack of lumbago, consequent on his sousings with cold water when threatened with heat apoplexy, compelled him to linger for about a week, and he was not sorry to have the opportunity of ministering for one Sunday in the Persian capital. There was little else to detain him, as Europeans were not allowed