'Through Persia on a side-saddle' [‎146] (177/360)

146 THROUGH PERSIA ON A SIDE-SADDLE
ushered into the tent where we were sitting, fine looking
women for the most part with fresh complexions and
beautiful eyes and teeth. They left their shoes at the door,
and an old lady in white cotton garments, wearing many
bead and amber bracelets and several turquoise rings,
entered first, and sat, or rather squatted, well to the front.
This personage demanded medicine for her eyes, which
were inflamed, and accordingly I gave her a lotion for
them; but she was not content with this, and pulled at
my skirt as she begged in the most insinuating manner for
any and every kind of remedy, until my brother, yielding
to her passion for drugs, gave her a few drops of chloro-
dyne on a lump of sugar to assuage her dard-i-dil, the only
complaint she could muster, being in remarkably robust
health. She retired at last with some Elliman's Embroca
tion to rub into an imaginary stiff shoulder, grumbling
bitterly, saying that we had given her nothing at all, and
beseeching us, up to the end, to be more liberal with the
contents of our medicine-chest.
It was now time to say good-bye to these delightful up
lands, for the Farman Farma was on his way to take up his
governorship at Kerman, and we did not wish to be absent
from the city when he arrived. We made our way there
fore to Rayin, passing along the route once traversed by
the great Venetian, the track winding through narrow
valleys, in which we came upon the ruins of long-deserted
caravanserais, and finally emerged on to the great Rayin
Plain, getting a glimpse of the large fort which dominates
the town. We saw here the Kerman Desert, which stretches
six hundred miles from Tun and Tabbas in the north
to Bampur in the south, its golden sands looking quite
alluring in the sunshine.