'Through Persia on a side-saddle' [‎303] (346/360)

V
TEHRAN REVISITED
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subscribe ; but if a Feringhee is seen to be winning, riders
will dash out from among the spectators and come into
collision with him, in order that he may lose the race.
A horse is prepared for racing by being given neither
food nor drink for some twelve hours before its trial, the
object being to make it lighter, and therefore able to
gallop, as its master imagines, faster; and the jockeys
are always boys of twelve to fourteen.
The Aspdawani garden is remarkable, not for its long
avenues of poplars, with rickety, blue-painted lamp-posts
at intervals, or its gaudy palace, but for the bronze
equestrian statue of the late Shah, placed on a small islet
in the middle of a large tank of water. The monarch is
sitting erect on a curveting steed, and in the dry, pure
air the bronze looks almost as if it were freshly cast.
The statue is interesting as being the first work of the
kind ever made in Persia, and its erection caused con
siderable comment among the Faithful, as it is entirely
contrary to the precepts of the Koran to make an image
or painting of anything living.
Persia is indeed rightly called the ' Land of the Sun,
and Tehran would be an ugly and depressing place of
residence were it not for that luminary. It is the flood
of sunshine lighting up the snowy peaks, bringing out
mellow tints on the mud buildings, and making the tile-
work of cupolas, gateways, and minarets to glitter, which
lends a beauty not its own to a Persian town. The long,
stony roads, the gravelly desert scattered with bones, relics
of the meals of the pariah dogs, and the sallow-faced, dingy-