'Through Persia on a side-saddle' [‎193] (226/360)

LAST MONTHS AT KERMAN
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natural or artificial. It was a most uncanny region, fit
abode for witches and hobgoblins, and I should have been
sorry to have been wandering about alone in the dead
silence, only broken by a stream which rushed along its
deeply-cut bed with a most disagreeable hollow groaning.
The grotesque shapes on the hillsides seemed to grin and
gibe at us; and it needed only a slight effort of the imagi
nation to enable me to see the huge saurians writhe and
the monstrous toads begin to creep towards us, such a
nightmare of a country it was!
Our destination that night was a Persian camp. The
Farman Farma had sent on part of his army from Kerman
to arrange supplies and forage for him, and one of our friends
was in command of the detachment. It seemed for a time
as if we had quite lost our way among these bewildering
hills, and darkness was coming on before we espied the
gleam of tents and the ruddy glow of bonfires, and heard
our host's welcome salutations. Tents had been erected
in readiness for us; and I was thankful to retire to mine,
as it was over twelve hours since we had started that
morning.
But a night in a Persian camp is not by any means a
restful experience to a novice, owing to the fact that every
Persian soldier on the march carries his kit on a donkey,
and the hundreds of these animals keep up such an inces
sant braying that even the seven sleepers of Ephesus would
have been hard put to it not to have awakened from their
slumbers.
When one further remembers that the groaning of camels,
the crackling and replenishing of the wood fires, the chat
ting of the men bivouacking round them, and the wail of
uncouth musical instruments, are all items added to the
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