'Notes of a journey from Kasreen to Hamadan across the Karaghan country. By J. D. Rees' [‎19v] (43/54)

30
NOTES OF A JOURNEY
a lock in Persia at all but this one, all of wood, with wooden
tongue and tumblers and opened by the finger was particularly
curious. Only the maker, the guardian of the tomb, knows how
to open it. An arc-shaped cenotaph, of polished and very
ancient-looking blackwood carved with Hebrew characters marks
the spot where below the floor the queen rests and by its side is
a similar cenotaph of smaller size for Mordecai. All around the
walls are pasted little inscriptions in Hebrew.
From the hill outside the town, whence lately some skulls,
pierced through the eyes and ears by nails, were dug, one sees
that most of the houses are of two stories, and that the roofs are
green with sprouting vegetation like those of the towns of Cash-
mere or the south-west coast of India. Nothing could be more
significant of the difference between the climatic conditions of
this locality and those of the greater part of Persia. Not that it
is damp here.
A mountain stream tumbles through the middle of the town
under bridges and over little waterfalls, and one of the main
streets positively ends in a village green.
The success of the missionary here is confined as elsewhere
in Persia to the conversion of A,rmenian Christians into Protes
tant Christians. One of these converts, when pressed to explain
the distinction, stated that it chiefly consisted in this, that the
former bathed in oil and the latter in water.
At Hamadan this little expedition ended, and paying off my
two companions I started to ride through Kurdistan past Ker-
manshah to the Turkish frontier and thence to Baghdad. This
road, though not so much frequented as it used to be, owing
to the jealousies of the Turkish and Persian Grovernments, which
have almost stopped the pilgrim traffic, is however in no sense
unknown. The whole route is best described by Sir Robert Ker
Porter, who has, however, hardly done justice to the beautiful
plain of Minderabad, a huge pasture land, gay with gigantic
hollyhocks and grazed over by innumerable cattle, sheep, and
horses.
Halting at Kurdish camps, at Besitoon, and other places of
interest in the country, some days elapse before the intervening 100
miles are passed and Kermanshah is reached, the chief town of
these parts, where the British Grovernment is represented by an
agent, subordinate to the Minister at Teheran, Haji Ahsan, com
monly called the Aga, whose reputation deserves to be even more
widely spread than it is. Of great wealth, high character, and
boundless hospitality, no Persian but the son of a rich merchant
of Baghdad, this gentleman lives among his own people, to do
good, caring nothing for the pleasures of the court, or the