"عبر بلاد فارس على سرج ركوب جانبي" [‎١‎٩‎٥] (٣٦٠/٢٢٨)

LAST MONTHS AT KERMAN 195
frontier town of Persia before the annexation of Baluchistan.
It was a new land that we had entered, a land of feathery
date-trees, and many a running stream bordered with lush
grass and waving pampas, while numerous mud-domed
villages, peeping out of groves of graceful palms, dotted the
plain. Bam was embowered in these lovely trees, over
which I waxed enthusiastic, to the amusement of my
brother, who warned me that I should cease to admire
them so much when I understood that their presence
meant heat, and was invariably connected with an abnormal
degree of dirt and squalor among their inhabitants. How
ever, it appeared to me that I had hardly been in the real
East until now, the palms recalling a hundred pictures of
Biblical scenes, familiar from childhood, and also seeming
to bring with them the mystery and glamour of the Orient,
the dark passions, secret intrigues and terrible revenges
which have ever fascinated the colder imagination of the
West. At every moment I expected to see shadowy glid
ing figures stealing on their way to carry out some wild
vengeance with the dagger or the poison-bowl; and every
veiled woman I passed, engaged in the prosaic duty of
shopping in the little bazaar, was possibly the heroine of
some weird romance to my excited fancy.
Several notables of Bam, among whom was our old friend
Asadilla Khan, rode out to meet us and escort us to our
quarters by way of the main street of the town, a dried-up
watercourse. The ubiquitous palm was used to build the
booths where rice and sweetmeats were sold, and its leaves
formed a rough thatching for these shelters, or were woven
into porches in front of many a doorway. At last we
reached a half-built mud house in a small garden of
palms, and it was a relief to get indoors, for the sun was