"عبر بلاد فارس على سرج ركوب جانبي" [‎٣] (٣٦٠/٣٠)

THE JOURNEY TO THE CAPITAL OF PERSIA 3
when I realised that I was at last in Persia, on the
threshold of a new life, which I ardently trusted might
have its quantum of adventure. I had been civilised all
my days, and now I felt a sense of freedom and
expansion which quickened the blood and made the
pulse beat high. The glamour of the East penetrated
me from the first moment of landing on its enchanted
shores, and although many a time I encountered hard
facts, quite sufficient to destroy the romantic illusions of
most folk, yet they struck against mine powerlessly.
I was under a spell throughout my stay in Persia—a
spell that endowed me with rose-coloured spectacles, and
that, even as I write, fills me with a strange yearning for
the country which became a much-loved home to me,
and where I spent the happiest years of my existence.
Yes, I was on Persian soil at last! Lalla Rookh, with
its rose gardens in which the 'bulbul' eternally sings,
its maids of peerless beauty, loved by heroes of sur
passing valour, its brave Fire Worshippers and awful
Veiled Prophet, came into my mind, mingled with a dozen
books of travel, in which the romance is stripped away
remorselessly, and Persia, bare and barren as she is in
reality, exposed to the view.
I was, in a way, prepared for much that might come by
the perusal of Lord Curzon's comprehensive work on the
country. Visions of many a fatigue and hardship rose up
in my mind's eye, long days on horseback, short nights in
desolate caravanserai or airy tent, the glory of the dawn
and the crimson flush of the sunset. And with this return
to Nature, with this free open-air life, mingled the thought
of studying a new race, of doing my best to see with their
eyes, to enter as far as I could into their unfamiliar lives.