'Through Persia on a side-saddle' [‎14] (41/360)

CHAPTER II
TEHRAN
I CONFESS that I was a good deal disappointed with
Tehran, regarded as the capital of Persia, when we entered
the city by the Kasvin Gate, one of the twelve entrances
covered with tiles which depict the heroic deeds of Rustem
and other national heroes, or portray the modern Persian
soldier of to-day in his uniform. These gateways look
imposing at a distance, from their size and colouring, but
are crude and ill-executed when seen near at hand. Then
we drove through a scantily-populated district, squalid
booths alternating with waste places or new mud buildings
in course of erection, showing that the city had not, as yet,
spread out to the full extent of its walls. The roads were
a mass of loose stones on a foundation of mud, which
became liquid after a fall of rain or snow, and every here
and there were large holes into which some one had thrown
two or three stones, all carriages zig-zagging across the
street to avoid these places, the cause of which was obvious
when we saw men digging up mud from the public high
way to mix with chopped straw for the manufacture of
sunburnt bricks!
High mud walls on either side hid the gardens for which
Tehran is famous, and although these barricades were
H