'Through Persia on a side-saddle' [‎268] (309/360)

268 THROUGH PERSIA ON A SIDE-SADDLE
between date-groves standing in water, continually having
to be on the look-out for the holes and broken places in
the road with which our residence in the East had made
us familiar. Occasionally we could get a five minutes'
canter between mud walls or past the neglected graves of
the horribly ill-kept cemetery ; but there was no real riding
possible, unless we could get free from the town and into
the desert, and this the lateness of our start precluded.
The prettiest ' bit' of Busreh was its one bridge, span
ning the creek with a high central arch to permit vessels
to pass beneath it. On either side of it rose tall houses
with projecting windows filled with stained glass in
elaborately carved and fretted frameworks. Crowds of
natives flocked at this point, and on the water lay great
laden buggelows with gaudily painted prows. Everything
else had fallen into ruin; most of the encaustic tiles which
had once adorned the domes and minarets of the squat
mosques having long ago dropped off, never to be re
placed.
******
I did not feel the loss of Baji nearly as much as I
expected, for Fakir Mahomet took upon himself to supply
her place. I remember coming into my room one morning
with the fixed determination to overhaul my wardrobe"!
when to my surprise I saw the syce seated on the floor of
my apartment with an array of undarned stockings around
him, which he was busily patching up in a quaint manner
with the aid of my work materials. On seeing me he
grinned from ear to ear, much delighted with himself, and
lemarked proudly, "Khanum, I am your Baji now!" and
he further signified that he had taken me under his
wing by appropriating one of the shelves in my room on