'Lord Curzon's Notes on Persia' [‎580r] (1161/1386)

BETWEEN THE UNITED KINGDOM AND INDIA.
7
least a terror to evildoers, if not always, or to the same degree, a praise
and protection to them that did well.
There is an institution in Persia which even the most cursory
account cannot pass without notice—the c.hupar or horse-post, which
has probably been handed down to the present time with but little
change from the days of Xerxes and Darius. Post-houses or rather
post-stables, containing relays of saddle horses, are kept up at distances
varying from 20 to 30 miles apart all along the main roads radiating
from the capital to the extremities of the kingdom. As a rule the
horses are good. A traveller who is accustomed to hard riding, and
not afraid of fatigue, can by means of the chapar get over the country
at the rate of 80 to 100 miles a day. He must, of course, sleep on
the ground, and content himself with the barest modicum in the way
of kit and provisions. Chapar is the express train of Persia, and I need
hardly say that we found it extremely serviceable, and used it freely.
I regard it with much respect, and I have probably had more experience
of this thoroughly Persian institution than any other European, having
chapared an aggregate distance of fully 25,000 miles. The fact that I
should have done so without molestation, travelling as I did without escort,
by day and by night, at all seasons of the year, speaks volumes for the
good order which generally prevailed. Sometimes, it is true, I narrowly
escaped, and all of our staff were not so fortunate as myself, several of
them having been robbed and wounded, and two of them killed.
The Persians are a decidedly robust, handsome race, amply endowed
with the gifts of intelligence and imagination. They are of a restless, active
disposition, and in this and many other respects totally unlike what
Orientals are supposed to be. Grasping and unscrupulous in the pursuit
of gain, they are free and even lavish in their expenditure. The rich
love to surround themselves with all that is beautiful. They live in
spacious houses luxuriously and tastefully furnished. Their love of fine
gardens with long vistas of Howers, shrubs, trees, and fountains, amounts
almost to a passion. “ Live and let live ” is one of the practical mottoes of
their lives. A rich man is almost invariably surrounded by a host of
retainers and dependants who, with their families, live on his bounty.
An acquaintance with the works of their great poets is very general.
More than once, at a Persian gentleman’s table, I have heard a guest
either prompted to an apt quotation or corrected in a false one by one
of the servants in attendance. The untruthfulness with which they are
so constantly credited, is not altogether vicious. Much of it is little
more than a form of politeness which ceases to deceive those who are
familiar with their ways. Their ever active imagination accounts for as
much more of it, as well as for the poetic and artistic instincts by which
they are so eminently distinguished.
But to resume our narrative. In the course of the year 1864,
a single wire line from Bushire vid Teheran to the Turkish frontier, near
Baghdad, had been erected on wooden posts supplied by the Persian
Government. This was accomplished with the greatest difficulty, owing
to the opposition of some of the local governors, who, naturally, regarded
with dislike a new-fangled Feringhi invention which could not fail, in