LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume I, Issue 68, 19 August 1874, Page 3

LITERATURE.

IN DANGER,. IN FOUR CHAPTERS. [From “Chamber’s Journal - ”] Continued. Ali Sahib, sitting a little apart from where I stood, was, with his graceful turban of pure white, his dark robe, and crimson girdle, a picturesque figure enough. Had he been of European race, I should have guessed his age to bo forty, or thereabouts, but a native of India always looks old for bis years, and there were no gray hairs mingling with his long wiry moustache, and no wrinkles to mar the smoothness of his high and narrow forehead. His swarthy face wore an aspect of unusual intelligence, and his bright bead-like eyes sparkled and glowed by contrast with the bushy black eyebrows that lowered above them. I found him, as the voyage proceeded, the pattern of all possible attendants. The Snwarrow, like many Russian steamers, was ill provided with accommodation for passengers ; the meals were a scramble, the service bad and careless, the berths none of the best ; yet somehow Ali Sahib, in his unobtrusive way, took care that my hot coffee and my shivingwater should be ready to the moment, and in twenty potty matters intervened to lighten the ills inseparable from a sojourn in a slovenly vessel, His tact and temper seemed faultless, for when I was conversationally disposed, I found in him a capital talker, full of information regarding India and Persia,* while he never intruded upon my meditations when I appeared to prefer to pace the deck alone. He was himself as abstemious as an anchorite, cheerfully dining on a few handfuls of rice and boiled pulse, washed down with pink sherbet, and 1 noticed that, contrary to the habits of most orientals, ho never once indulged in the luxury of a pipe. ‘Do you see that ?’ said Ali Sahib, one morning, as he pointed out what looked like a hovering cloud of fleecy vapor, just visible on the eastward horizon. ‘ That is the mountain top known as Ax-tope, or the White Hill, the only spot in the Khivan highlands where there is eternal snow, And the blue line yonder is the Persian coast, but so faintly visible that it needs an experienced eye to see where land meets water. Our captain has steered his course much to the east, meaning, probably, to touch at some port of Astrabad before standing for Mazanderan ; but so far, so good.’ My guide’s conjecture proved correct, and after landing on the shore of Astrabad some bales of goods destined for that province, the Snwarrow rapidly coasted towards the more mountainous country of Mazanderan, and soon we could see the majestic summits of the craggy Elburz frowning high above the white beach, and the dwarf palm-trees and cane-brakes of the swampy shore. The wind was blowing freshly from the far-off steppes of Tartary and Siberia, and the dancing wavelets flashed like leaping silver in the sunbeams. Long filmy streaks of cloud stretched themselves across the hitherto unvarying azure of the sky, and to these harbingers of an approaching change of weather Ali Sahib called my attention. ‘ Tails and manes of Timour’s wild mares!’ be said, smiling; ‘ such, at least, is the name which the wandering Tartars give them, and they are reckoned as a certain sign that storms are about to succeed to the summer heats. Well, you English have a proverb that it is an ill wind that blows no good, and yonder poor folks are probably of the same opinion;’ and as he spoke he pointed out to me a row of fishing-craft that lay at anchor, with furled sails, under the projection of a jutting reef, but each little felucca having perched at her masthead a scantily attired boy, whoso bare limbs, as he clung to the slender spar, looked like those of a bronze statue. ‘Night and day,’ explained the interpreter, in answer to my questions, ‘they keep watch at this season of the year, but not for fish. This is the time when the naptha, washed from its bed by rain and tempest, may be expected to float in glittering floods upon the surface of the Caspiau. Let but a glimpse be caught of the dull glimmer, miles away, and every sail is set, and every oar out, to hurry on where jar, and gourd, and pitcher may be filled with the precious oil that Allah grants to the gleaning of the poor. So was it ever, ay, before the old days of Nushirwan the King. For times may change, and the stranger bear rule, but Persia is Persia still, and cannot alter. And he turned his head away, muttering between his teeth some lines of a poetry that even to my unskilled ear sounded very differently from the (lowery verse of Hafiz and Sadi, with which his memory was so amply stored.

We landed at Allecabad, a little harbor at the mouth of the Amol, and nestling, as it were, under the shadow of the mighty range of the Elburz. Here Herr Gross, the German clerk, remained in company with the shipwrights, while I lost no time, under the auspices of Ali Sahib, in hiring horses, and in setting off for the interior. It is unnecessary to say more of the commercial part of ray undertaking, than that ray anticipations wore surpassed by tbe amount of available timber that clothed the steep sides of the hills, and choked the narrow glens, and by the low price at which these fine trees, the oak, the elm, the walnut, the wild pear, and the mountain-ash, could be bought. The truth was that, save for the purposes of the charcoal-burners, who, like Ali Baba in the story of the Forty Thieves , brought their fuel by ass-loads at a time into the hamlets, where it was used for cooking, wood was in small demand. There was no means of transport by which so ponderous a commodity could be conveyed to the uutimbered districts in the middle of the kingdom; whereas the streams, such as the Amol, would, when a freshet should occur, provide a speedy and economical mode of transit for the felled timber to the coast, where rafts could be built, and towiug-power provided. The wood was considered as the joint property of the village communities, and it was, thanks to the patient dexterity with which Ali Sahib bargained with the elders of each petty municipality, that f succeeded in procuring the trees at a fair market rate, while there were plenty of sharp axes,

with strong arms to wield them, to be had tor the hiring. Very soon we had imposing piles of timber collected on the banks of the A mol, ready to be floated down as soon as the expected rains should set in, and the mountain torrents be sufficiently swollen to yield the volume of water necessary. I was now tempted, by the flourishing reports which my zealous interpreter gave mo of the natural resources of a district yet mote remote among the spurs of the Elburz, and situated at perhaps forty miles’distance from the landing-place, to make further purchases of limber on behalf of the Company, and at the same time to inspect some minerals which, although now neglected, might prove very valuable, could we obtain the royal permission to work them. This journey look us into a wilder and more romantic portion of the country than that which we had previously traversed, and here I was astonished at the difference of manners which prevailed between the mountain peasantry and those of the lowlands. The water-pipes, the invariable adjuncts of an ordinary Persian divan, grew scarcer as I proceeded, and the fragrant scent of the 1 rose leaf ’ tobacco more and more rare. In some of the hamlets which wc entered the women’s faces were unveiled, though they ran shrieking to assume their coarse yashraacks as soon as they espied a stranger. In some of the cottages 1 was surprised to see a small lamp, of antique shape, kept incessantly burning in a sort of niche, such ns that in which in the south of Europe tapers flicker before the image of some patron saint ; and once when I carelessly extinguished a candle by blowing at the flame, my hosts for the fime being, who were a widow and her children, set up a cry of horror, and were duly chidden for this act of insubordination by my guide, who. however, excused them gently enough to me. on the ground of their being poor and untaught people, among whom a leaven of ancient superstition yet lingered.

One thin” 1 was clear ; Ali Sahib’s popularity among this simple race seemed unbounded, The peasants were courteous to me, but there was something of veneration in the manner in which they accosted him which almost puzzled me. I remembered, however, that in the East holiness and learning are synonyms, and (hat, no doubt, the mooushce’s elaborate education appeared marvellous in the eyes of these primitive foresters I admit that ho did much to win the good-will of those around him, writing at their request with magnificent flourishes of his reed pen as it traversed the thin ricepaper, their long-projected letters to sons who were grooms or tent pitchers at Teheran, adjusting disputes as to landmarks or inheritances, reconciling sullen husbands to sharptongued wives, and gaining the confidence, as it seemed, of all children. He could recite poetry, too, to an extent unparalled among Europeans, and would repeat the tales of Mejnouu, or some wondrous stories of jinns, afreets, magicians, tyrants, princesses. and hidden treasures, with a hundred auditors hanging breathless on his lips as he proceeded in the narrative. As for the promised minerals, the specimens which were brought to me were rich enough to merit a careful scrutiny of the spot whence the hematite, the pyrites, and the copper had been of old extracted. I therefore started for the mountains, guided by an intelligent peasant, who bore in his hand a polo spiked with iron, ‘ good,’ as he told me, ‘to beat off the bears and wolves that prowled in winter about the sheepfolds,’ and which aided him to bound across the many threads of water, often with deep channels and rocky banks, that intercepted our course. Ibrahim, the villager in question, was a fine strong young fellow, lately married, and one of the richest peasants in the hamlet, and there was nothing cringing or servile in his demeanour, which was frank and kind. I found myself able to converse with him with tolerable case, since he was a proficient in Turkish, having been kidnapped by the Uzbegs and sold as a slave at Khiva, whence he had been ransomed by his family ; and I was thus able to cko out my growing stock of Persian words with the more familiar language of our labourers at Kizil-Gat«h. 4 s we reached the rocky glen where the abandoned mines—worked, so my guide informed me, in the days of Soliman-ben-Daoud, but guarded now by malignant spirits, who would never allow men to do more than pick up a few pebbles above-ground— l heard the far-away clash of cymbals, the notes of a barbaric trumpet, and the low hoarse beating of drums, mingling with the clatter of steel. My companion started, and shook his clenched hand, in the attitude of one who utters a malediction, in the direction whence the sounds came. ‘ What is wrong ? ’ I enquirely, hesitatingly. 1 the soldiers—the Persian troops,’ answered Ibrahim, with a dark ’ook. ‘This must be the camp of Mirza Hussein, the young brother of the prince-goveruor of the province. I hoard that lie and his were ranging the count ry, eating up the substance of "honester folks than themselves, and swaggering and sculling at our rustic ways and plain fashions. I like not to know that those greedy troopers are our neighbors. We shall need to keep a watchful eye ou garden and henroost, and well if they get uo pretext for harrying us out of house and home, as they did at' Kara-Serai a mouth since.’ But my curiosity was strongly excited at hearing that a Persian military force was dose at hand, and L had no fancy for withdrawing until I should have had a nearer view of the encampment, whither Ibrihim, after some grumbling, consented to accompany me. Ou the road, I asked him whether he really conceived that we incurred any peril by approaching the troops, or whether his dislike to them was entirely founded on his experience of the pilfering propensities inherent in the ill-paid soldiery of an oriental monarch. He made answer with a smoothness that seemed constrained after his late outburst, that be could hardly tell ; that a Eeriughee like myself, with his papers iu perfect order, would be respected by any government official, and that the only risk incurred by a peasant like himself was that of being impressed t o do a certain amount of labour." gratis, at carpel-boating, drawing water, or the like. At the same time the presence of such a force imposed heavy burdens upon the country that had to support it; and the women must stay within doors, and the beehives be bidden, and the oil-jars buried, and flic cattle kept from straying, so long as stragglers from the camp were on the look-out for opportunities of plunder. And now we came in sight of the camp itself, while tents and green ones, each surmounted by a ball of gilt pith ; while iu front of those gaudier pavilions .which were the property of the chiefs, spears bad been stuck into the turf, and grooms stood holding horses gorgeously caparisoned. To he Continued.