THROUGH PERSIA BY CARAVAN.*
"By the waters of the Vistula we sat down and talked of the historical wrongs of Poland." This is the first sentence of Mr. Arnold's work, and it will be inferred that it tells of a good deal more than Persia ; in fact, the first third of the first volume is almost entirely devoted to Russia, and a quarter of the second to Turkey, India, and the Eastern problem. Mr. Arnold's travels have dispelled not a few of his delusions, and the first is that regarding the character of the Pole. He used to look upon him as "one who passed his time in the severest practice of the most noble exhibitions of personal honour and patriotism," and as "the inhabitants of craggy hills and lonely dales, living always in sight of high mountains and deep forests ;" but he has now discovered the real Pole to be "the laborious cultivator of a sandy plain, which would be a desert if it were in a rainless country, two thousand miles south of Poland. He is pinched and poor, as a tiller of the sand is likely to be; to say the truth, he is very ignorant, and terribly bigoted; a neglected child in education, and a priest-led fanatic in religion." Mr. Arnold, who is angry—perhaps righteously angry—with the Pole, because he is as light-hearted as a Frenchman under a worse fate—puts his disappointment a little too sharply. There seems no earthly—or rather, earthy—reason for his having ever placed to the credit of the Pole the physical advantages which the Montenegrin possesses for the development of picturesque patriotism. We should remember that he has seen the Pole at his worst, down-trodden, if not dejected, under the dead-weight of Russian oppression. After the Norman Conquest, the Saxon appears in all reliable chronicles as a pitiful and pitiable crea- ture, and it could, with truth, have been said of him that he was "pinched and poor" and "a neglected child in education," yet he absorbed and transformed his conqueror. The Pole cannot, of course, absorb the Russian, but he may be one of the agents in his transformation. There is, as we all know, not only John, but John's ideal John—who always plays a formidable part in the background—to be taken into consideration, and it is not impossible that the Pole, who, like the Frenchman, is fond of ideals, may be able to come up to his. The Pole has, how- ever, one consolation,—Mr. Arnold is as severe upon his tyrant as upon himself. He has the reverse of admiration for Russian manners and customs and commercial principles ; "in point of superstition, I see no superiority in the lower classes of Russia over those of Spain ;" the noticeable want of cleanliness he de- tests almost as heartily as he does the objection to free-trade ; it is with something not unlike a chuckle that he recalls the reasons which have caused the decline of Odessa as a corn port, and the general financial failure of Russia ; and he points out that the "religious difficulty" is settled in Nijni Novgorod, in the interests of Russian trade, by the lifting of the Crescent to the skies as high as the Cross, and the establishment of a mosque, probably the most northern one in Europe. Mr. Arnold's description of the Nijni Fair is one of the brightest in his book :— "Now is the time for the last bargains in the greatest Fair in the world—an international exposition half-a-dozen times as large as that which in 1851 set us all thinking the millennium had arrived when Prince Albert's ideas and Paxton's plans were realised in Hyde Park. What shall we buy ? There is a sharp-eyed tea merchant watching our movements, hoping to get rid of yet one or two more of those square seventy-pound bundles of tea piled at the door of his store. The tea is in a light chest, which has been cased before it left China in a damp bullock's hide, the stitching of which has been strained and hardened * Through Persia hy Cararan. By Arthur Arnold. London: Tinsley Brothers.
in the long caravan. journey over Central-Asian deserts. Thinking that we may perhaps purchase, he makes a sign of encouragement, and forthwith rams an iron bodkin, three feet long, and shaped like a cheese- scoop, but with a solid, pointed end, into the tea, twists it, and produces
fragrant sample. He is one of hundreds of tea merchants who have hired a stall in the Fair ; and in compliment to the commodity, the roofs in this part are built pagoda-fashion, but, like all the rest, the tea stores are sheds of timber and brick, placed together in long parallel lines, sheltered from sun and rain by a rough arcade, upon the brick pave- ment of which purchasers and idlers pass along. More attractive, perhaps, than the tea dealer, i8 the Persian opposite, whose dark eyes gleam with desire to sell anything in his store. He has carpets of soft colours, such as the sons of Iran best know how to blend, carpets heavy as himself to cover large rooms ; small carpets, mere handfuls, on which the faithful may kneel in orthodox Mahommedan fashion five times a day, fixing their eyes in the direction of Mecca. He has books ; here is a copy of the Koran, bound in Tabriz, marble-backed, with yellow-edged leaves, like some of our older editions, a book which for two roubles any one, no matter whether his faith is centred at Mecca or Jerusalem, anywhere or nowhere, may put in his pocket. This bright- eyed merchant might be shown in London for the Shah, whom he much resembles ; and if, in his high-standing cap of black lamb-skin, his grass-green tunic, and his scarlet-lined overcoat, he were to appear at Charing Cross surrounded by two or three of his own travelling trunks, which are also for sale, by way of luggage, he would be sure, as a travelling 'sensation,' to achieve legitimate success. He presses with a gay smile upon our attention one of the chests, which is painted bright vermillion, cross-barred, like Malvolio's legs, with bands of black ; but he has another of green and black, and a third of yellow with blue bands of iron ; and if one had the boldness requisite for travelling in such illustrious company, these trunks would certainly obviate all dif- ficulty as to recognising one's luggage in the customary and truly British scramble at any London terminus. We see at a glance that any one who wishes to have a true idea of Nijni must get rid at once and for ever of any notion of an English fair, by way of comparison. On the Volga they mean business, not pleasure ; and the fair is held in buildings infinitely ruder and simpler in construction, but quite as per- manent as those of the Lowther Arcade. For about half the year these are closed, and the straight lines of the parallel streets of the fair are only tenanted by sparrows, picking up the last traces of the great gathering. The site is flat, but in fair-time the roads between the long rows of sheds are worn into rivulets of filth, or into heaps and hollows of dust. Not one man in five wears a leather shoe; the rest, those who do not go barefoot, are for the most part content with sandals made of dried grass, bound over thick woollen stockings with wisps of the same vegetable. There is a great deal of genuine barter going on. In one sense, indeed, it may be truly said that no one at this gathering has ready' money. Here are two Persian boys bargaining for a ring which has surely come from one of the fabriques d'imitation of Paris. The process is long. Twenty copecks, perhaps, divide seller and buyer, and it may be that part of this difference will disappear in talk to-day, and the remainder to-morrow or the day after. Three Tartars, dressed in ragged sheep-skins, have their slanting eyes, that unmistakable mark of race, fixed upon the gay glories of a cotton handkerchief, which I hope is Manchester, but fear is Moscow work. And so it goes on all through the busy town, or commercial camp, which is called the Fair of Nijni Novgorod. Not rarely does a bargain take three days in the making. What Adam Smith calls the ' higgling of the market' is a tremendous business at the Russian mart. 'Small profit and quick returns is not the Nijni motto. Prices are all 'fancy.' It is not easy to get at the relation of supply and demand. The dealer asks twice or three times the legitimate value, and then engages in a wordy duel with the purchaser, in which bystanders are quite at liberty to jine in,' as a Yankee would say."
Passing from Russia, Mr. Arnold, after an interesting and some- what stormy voyage in the 'Caspian,' arrived at Resht, capital of the Persian province of Ghilan, where he was entertained by Consul Churchill, who, by the way, has recently given us an in- teresting report, in which he points out that one of the great defects in Persia is its terrible deficiency in provincial organisation, With Tehran the travellers were disappointed,—" one sees nothing but wide, dusty spaces, broken occasionally by a mud wall, of precisely the same colour as the road." And even in the Bel- gravia of the Persian capital, "the only difference was that the twelve-feet wall was panelled, and the mud cement ooveral with finer plaster." In fine, "from one end of Persia to the other, this miserable condition of decay, dilapidation, and ruin is char- acteristic of all public edifices,—the mosques, palaces, bridges, everything." The author attributes this to the universal cor- ruption of the Government, and he is no doubt right. The best house in Tehran is the British Legation, a much finer edifice than that of the Russian Minister. Russian authority, however, is predominant there, and a complainant is better off when backed by Russian than by British influence. It is so far consolatory, on the other hand, that most Persian statesmen—including Houssein Khan, the Persian Premier—have a decided leaning towards Britain ; but probably, as Mr. Arnold says, "the Persian liking for England is a natural preference for that Power which is the less suspected of designs upon the independence of the country." Mr Arnold does not disguise his opinion of Mr. Taylour Thompson, the British Minister. He credits him with the virtues—necessary in dealing with Orientals — of "strength of will and directness of speech," but according to Mr. Arnold, "he is far better acquainted with Persian modes of thought and with Persian politics than with the affairs and the thought and policy of his own country," and he certainly shows him as being careless when the case of Mr. Bruce, the mis- sionary in danger of being murdered, was brought before him. In fact, British influence in Persia is maintained chiefly by tele- graph wires and Scotch telegraph clerks ; the English community in Tehran is small, but it is wonderfully free from the vice of' scandalmongering which prevails in narrow societies. Herein- a portrait of the Persian Premier :— " Mirza Houssein Khan is a man about middle height and middle age, with, for a Persian, common-place features, full of mobility, and expressing great cleverness. He talks French fluently, and has a quick, rus8" manner. An artificial manner is cultivated by Persians, who in publics affairs and correspondence do not affect sincerity. The Sipar Saler is a man whom, even at first sight, one feels little disposed to trust ; a statesman of very superior ability and intelligence, probably spoiled by the cruel difficulties of his position. If the reports current in Tehran are true, his Highness has not found it easy to keep his head on his shoulders, in a great position in a eonntry governed by a way- ward despot, whose mind may at any time be fatally influenced against his Minister. An Oriental Minister, even so clever a man as Mirza Houssein Khan, does not seem desirous- of push- ing his own country into European grooves when he has travelled in the Western Continent. If such ideas ever enter into such minds, they are, at all events, soon abandoned. He has, and that in itself is no small advantage, a truer estimate than can be formed by his untravelled countrymen of the strength, power, and wealth of the nations of Europe. But it is the Palaie Royal of Paris rather than the Palace of West- minster which fills the largest place in his mind. His longing, as a rule, turns rather to the former than to the latter. In his shallow, courteous conversation, M:rza Houssein Khan did not appear to -me to have any other view for Persia than that of battling with the diffi- culties of his own position, which I have no doubt are very engrossing. As he is certainly in experience the ablest and most competent of Persian statesmen, Mirza Houssein Khan would seem to be the, right man in the right place. But his is a position which would break—the heart of a good man.. One can imagine a good man killing himself in the effort to reform the government of Persia. But success would seem impossible, and endurance must lead to compromise with evil and cor- ruption of every sort. A violent death would be the likely end of a good man in such a position, and wealth that of one who would accept the place and swim in the stream of corruption."
Under Houssein Khan, Persia is pursuing a retrograde course, and corruption and mismanagement abound everywhere ; the Persian soldiers are excellent in physique, but poorly trained ; their officers box the ears of the privates and make money by usury, and it would appear that Teki Khan, once Commander-in- Chief of the army and acting Grand Vizier, whose murder stained the earlier part of the reign of the present Shah, was hated because he was honest, and had "no itching palm for public or private money." Mr. Arnold's experience of Persia after leaving Tehran was increased by his jolty caravan—travelling from place to place, but there is no evidence that his subsequent travels modified the opinions he had formed of the political position and prospects of Persia. From Tehran he proceeded to lspahan, the " Seville " of Persia, passing through the sacred city of Koons, and Kashan, the Birmingham of the country. It says little for the prospect of improved locomotion in Persia that the Governor of Kashan, with whom Mr. Arnold had an inter- view, in his heart evidently looked upon a railway as "a machinery for bringing Englishmen into countries where they are not wanted, and which they would not leave, if once introduced by the mysterious and mechanical steam-caravan." On the way to Ispahan he met Mr. Bruce, the sole English missionary in the country, of whom he speaks very highly as an honest, courageous man, a good rider, a laborious scholar, with appar- ently a weakness for introducing dogmatic Calvinism into his teaching. Mr. Agenoor, an Armenian, who fills the office of British Agent, he describes as "a respectable but timid little man, who seems to gain all the strength he has from his connection with the British Government,"—and no doubt he is perfectly right in holding that there are many dis- advantages in entrusting the representation of Great Britain in Mahommedan capitals to members of the subject Chris- tian races of the East. He made also the acquaintance of the eldest son of the Shah, known as the Zil-&Sultan, or "Shadow of the King." The Zil-i-Sultan is physically the image of his father, is a headstrong but not altogether un- amiable youth, whose political sympathies may be inferred from his expressing a hope to Mr. Arnold that Don Carlos would obtain the throne of Spain ; and his knowledge of his own country was evidenced in his asserting that his father had five " crores," of soldiers, that is, millions. Although this Prince is the eldest son of the Shah, he is not the heir. and Crown Prince, that position being given to the second son, and it is quite- pow- Bible that on the death of his father he may figure as a Persian Don Carlos, although he differs from that baffled pretender in having a dislike of priests. Two incidents diversified the stay of Mr. Arnold at Ispahan. He took fever, and was attended
by the " hakim " of the Zil-i-Sultan, who, although not very advanced in his knowledge of medicine, has some modern tastes, has edited a little paper in S hiraz, and has written an autobiography. The other event was the outcry, on the part of a combination ap- parently of Mahominedans and Roman Catholics, against the Pro- testant school, which induced the Prince to close it. At one time, there seemed a great danger of an assault on the English residents in Ispahan, and it was only averted by the exertions of Mr. Arnold, who complains much of the English Minister for not giving Mr. Brace any support, or even answering the telegram in which the missionary announced the perilous position of him- self and his compatriots. At Ispahan, too, it may be noticed that Mr. Arnold was present at a thoroughly Persian dinner, the most notable guest being a large, loud-voiced mercantile Khan, with &marvellous capacity for pillau and arrack. The next important stage in the caravan journey was Shiraz, the literary capital of Persia. Before reaching it the travellers had to pass through classic Persia, and saw the well-known relics of the empires of Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes. Mr. Arnold's interesting chapter on this subject, as well as that on Persian literature, we must leave to our readers to make acquaintance with for themselves. At Shiraz he had pleasant interviews with the Governor, Yahia Khan, who can write French like a native :—
"Yahia Khan is the most accomplished and Europeanised man in Persia. His manners are charming, and there can be but very few Asiatics who have such easy command of the French language. If he were a man of firmness, vigour, of strong and lofty ambition, Yahia Khan might do great things for his country. But one sees at a glance that though superior to hie-brother in culture, and probably in moral worth, he has not the energy, the boldness, or the power of intrigue of Mirza Hou.ssein Khan. He wore a military undress of European cut— the only Governor who had not received me with all the jewels and ornaments at command. In this and many other points, the superior civilisation of Yahia Khan was evident. His apartment was not unlike a barrack-room in officers' quarters : the walls white and bare, the floor covered with matting, with two carpets laid upon it. Chairs are always scarce in Persia; there were only three in the Firman Firma's room, two for Mr. Odling and myself, beside the arm-chair of the Governor, which he compelled me to accept. The British agent, a native of rank, the Mirza Hassan Ali Khan, a man of very agreeable manners and of much cultivation arrived as soon as we were seated, and gracefully accepting Yahia khan's apology for the absence of a fourth chair, took his seat, in probably greater comfort, upon the floor. All the weakness of the Firman Firma's amiable character appeared in his conversation. Of the ills in the condition of Persia, he was in no way ignorant ; of amendment he had nothing to say. I did not expect much in that direction from a man who, while drawing a splendid in- come from the province, was content to leave the front of his house a heap of ruins. It is this supine submission to the process of decay which is the bane of Persia. From highest to lowest everything is ad- ministered as if the only object of those in power was to seek their own momentary advantage, as if, in fact, the Persians held the country as yearly tenants, and nothing more. When Sir Lewis Polly was (in his capacity as Political Resident at Bushire) in official communication with the Government of Shiraz, he showed his true appreciation of the poli- tical system of Persia in a report to the Bombay Government:—' A.,' he wrote, 'gives to his sub-farmers permission to collect the revenue by force ; this is dose; next year some of the peasants are fled ; some of the land is lying waste. The country, in brief, is reventted as if the Government were to end with the expiry of the Governor's lease.' The Firman Firma had but one word of explanation concerning the condi- tion of Persia ; the country, he said, was 'very, very poor. There had been a few robberies lately in his province:bat he believed it was gener- ally quiet (he has since been recalled, owing to his inability t‘i control the turbulent people of Shiraz); he should provide us with an armed escort from Shiraz to Bushire, which he had intended should be ten men and an officer; but as I preferred to have only two sowers, he would give orders that but two, and those the most trustworthy, should accom- pany our caravan. He provided the customary entertainment, of tobacco, tea, and coffee, and was most polite in desiring to do anything which could conduce to the comfort and pleasure of our stay in Shiraz."
From Shiraz Mr. Arnold proceeded to Bushire, and thence by Bombay to theSuez Canal, and home. It will thus be easily seen how Mr. Arnold has observations to make upon India, upon Egypt, upon Mahommedanism, and the Eastern Question. It is to be re- gretted that Mr. Arnold has not told us a little more than he has done about the present attitude of Persian Mahommeclaniam towards that in Turkey and India, but there is no reason to believe that it is specially favourable. According to Mr. Arnold, the Havelock and Outram campaign in 1857 has exercised no real influence, and were we once again to occupy Bushire, we should throw the test part of Persia into the hands of Russia ; indeed, all that Mr. Arnold can say is that "it is our interest to promote reform in the Shah's Government, and to improve his army, in order to secure better government in Persia, which is impossible without a sufficient and well-trained military force." In con- clusion, let any one follow up Mr. .Arnold's work with a perusal of Mr. Churchill's report for 1876 from Resht, and he cannot fail to come to the conclusion that the less, or at least the later, we have to do directly with Persia, the better.
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