THROUGH PERSIA BY CARAVAN.*

 When the Shah of Persia visited London a few years ago, many enthusiastic people entertained high hopes that the monarch's experiences of Western civilisation might induce him, on returning home, to inaugurate a new era of progress in the history of a country which has so illustrious a past, and which calls up so many classic memories. Baron Reuter, it was said, had obtained certain conceptions which would enable him to lift Persia out of her chronic state of decay, and give her a fresh start after a modern and Western fashion. The snorting of the steam horse was to be heard in the romantic land of the Arabian Nights, and comfortable railway carriages were to supersede the rules and "yaboos" of the slow moving caravans. But Western influences failed to do their work. The Shah went back to Tehran taking with him an album peopled with actresses as a memento of European life, and after giving his mind to the publication of that great literary effort, his famous diary, he subsided into the usual state of indifference, satisfied if only supplies were forthcoming to minister to his pleasures. Persia remains a land of ruin and decay and to all appearance there is no Cyrus looming on the horizon who might raise it up from its degradation, and restore it to its ancient grandeur.

Mr Arthur Arnold has written a very pleasant and readable book, which bears, on the face of it, many marks of trustworthiness both in its facts and inferences. It is the fault of modern travellers that they ask us to accept very sweeping conclusions on the strength of very scanty data. Mr. Arnold records what he himself saw and heard, and, where his assertions require it, he supports them with the authority of more experienced men than himself. He and his wife (who in pluck and endurance seems another Lady Baker) started on their journey by way of the Russian capital Moscow, and Nijni Novgorod, sailing down the Volga to the Caspian, which they traversed from north to south, and landing at Enzelli, from which point they began their journey through Persia. Leaving the Caspian early in October they travelled southward by way of Teheran, Ispahan, and Shiraz reaching Bushire, on the Persian Gulf, in February.

After reading Mr Arnold's two volumes, only one conclusion is possible that the state of things in Persia is almost as bad as it can be. Oriental monarchs have ever been tyrants and despots. A halo of supernatural dignity surrounds them in the eyes of their subjects, even though the divinity of their claims asserts itself by force and the most reckless disregard of human life. In the official language of his country, the Shah of Persia is styled “ Zil-ullah" or " Shadow of God, a name which would seem to indicate a monarch ever ready to exercise justice and to maintain the right. But the reality is very different. The Shah's Government, to use Mr Freeman's language of Turkish rule, is “an organised system of brigandage," and the Shah himself is the chief brigand, who receives the largest share of the plunder. The people of Persia are as so many poor sheep who exist for the special benefit of their rulers. No shadow of a doubt ever seems to cross the minds of the Shah or the governors of his provinces as to their absolute liberty to dispose of the lives and persons, the property and rights, of everyone in Persia. And the marvellous thing about it all is that the people submit as a matter of course, in a hopeless, despairing way, as if redress for their grievous wrongs were not to be thought of. The government is carried on as though the country were to last for a few years only, the object of the rulers being their own momentary and immediate advantage. The governors, who generally receive their appointments from the Shah in consideration of large bribes, avail themselves of their opportunities to the fullest extent. They employ certain subordinates, whose duty it is to collect the taxes, a large proportion of which they greedily appropriate to themselves, after sending a sufficient sum to their Royal master, who is said to be very fond of presents." Taxation in Persia is not conducted on any nicely-balanced principles of economic science. The tax-gatherers methods are simple and direct ; his arguments are bullets and swords, and his operations are so effectively conducted that "conscience-money" would seem to him a very grim joke. His requirements are almost unlimited, and, in many provinces, the peasantry are literally robbed of everything they possess. Occasionally the right to collect the taxes of certain districts is sold to some khan for a fixed sum, which is paid to the Government, that is, to the Shah and the high officials around him, who undertake to require no accounts and to ask no questions. The result can readily be imagined. " Thrice the amount, " says Mr. Arnold, of the British Prime Minister's salary, or twice that of the President of the United States does not satisfy men of the first official rank in Persia. And while the Prince Governors in the provinces and all the high functionaries of state plunge their greedy hands thus deep into the miserable revenue, forced—often at the bayonet's point— from the poorest of peasants, the soldiery are not seldom marauders, with the excuse that they cannot obtain their pay from the Government. The creditors of the peasants and small traders are generally in the uniform of the Shah. In Persia the trade of small money-lenders is usually carried on by soldiers, for these only feel sure of the requisite power to recover their loans. The defaulter well knows that if he does not repay the soldier, his house or his store in the bazaar will be plundered of all that is worth taking by a gang of military money-lenders." Bribery, too, is universal in official life. The judgment of a governor is given, as a rule, in favour of the highest bidder. Minor officials bribe their superiors, who keep up the system until the foot of the throne is reached, and the demands of its occupant fairly satisfied. Even in the army it is the same. The soldiers shirk drill that they may engage in more profitable employment and the officers are appeased by small bribes. Those latter, in their turn, have to bribe the Minister who pays them, and so it goes on. It would be unfair, however, to say that this corruption is absolutely universal. There have been several Persian Ministers who have tried to check the evil, and to organise an honest system of collecting the revenue, but their efforts, in the face of those who have, as it were a vested right in robbery and pillage, have naturally been unsuccessful. Not long ago, the Shah was induced to have placed in every large town a " box of Justice," in which the people were asked to lodge any complaints which they had against the officials. The boxes were carefully watched, and consequently seldom used, the few who did use them finding out to their cost that silence was their best policy. In trying to punish the robbers, too, some vigorous governors, possessed of good intentions, have administered justice with more zeal than discretion. When a robbery takes place— especially if it be a robbery of a caravan of Europeans—the chief idea seems to be that some one must suffer, and no very nice discrimination is used in the choice of the victims. The order given on such an occasion varies but slightly from that of the Queen of Wonderland—" Off with somebody's head."

The results of such a system of Government may be easily guessed. Persia is going steadily backwards, while those who alone are influential throughout the country watch the process of retrogression with the most absolute complacency. The peasantry are utterly unable to make way against robbers and tax-gatherers, who seem to be omnipresent in bad years as well as good. Large tracts of the country are barren and rocky, but even in those districts which are admirably suited for cultivation of the most productive kind, agriculture is much neglected. The same plough which scraped the soil in the days of Constantine, and the much earlier days of Herodotus, is still used by the Persian farmer, to whom the more effective English implement would appear indeed a gift from Allah. Nor is Mr. Arnold's account of life in the villages and towns of a more cheerful description. The sanitary arrangements are thoroughly bad, and the amount of perfectly avoidable suffering and discomfort is almost incredible. A great deal of the ophthalmia which prevails during the oppressively hot summer might be avoided by a free use of water, but the Persian method of obeying the injunctions of the Koran respecting ablutions has no special bearing upon cleanliness. In the winter, too, when the cold is extreme and life a prolonged shiver, the wretched people live in the most uncomfortable houses where doors and windows are of the rudest manufacture. Both Teheran and Ispahan are poor places—cities of mud— with no grand buildings upon which to rest the eye and with absolutely none of that gorgeous splendour which is generally associated in the popular mind with the capitals of the East. "From one end of Persia to the other," says Mr Arnold, " this miserable condition of decay, dilapidation, and ruin is characteristic of all public edifices—the mosques palaces bridges—everything. It is probably correct to say that this invariable condition is a consequence of the universal corruption of the Government. The work of maintenance and repair belongs to the Executive Government, and the funds which should be thus expended pass into the rapacious pockets of the governors of the country. The gross neglect of useful public works in Persia recalled to my mind a passage in which Adam Smith refers to this as one of the worst symptoms of the worst administration. He nearly describes the state of things in Persia in the following passage, which had reference to the condition of the bye roads in France about the middle of the 18th century, with the difference that in Persia no one delights in expenditure of any sort for the public advantage. Expenditure is never made except with a view to private plunder. "The proud minister of an ostentatious court may frequently take pleasure in executing a work of splendour and magnificence, such as a great highway which is frequently seen by the principal nobility, whose applause not only flatter his vanity, but even contribute to support his interest at court. But to execute a number of little works, in which nothing that can be done can make any great appearance, or excite the smallest degree of admiration in any traveller, and which, in short, have nothing to recommend them but their extreme utility, is a business which appears in every respect too mean and paltry to merit the attention of so great a magistrate. Under such an administration, therefore, such works are almost entirely neglected.' "

But notwithstanding all these depressing indications of bad government, travel in Persia is not altogether devoid of some counterbalancing charms. The traveller, it is true, has to depend upon his servants' skill and honesty to the fullest extent. If they fail him, his chances of comfort are very small, for the wayside caravanserai are not as our wayside inns, while the Chapar-Kanah is an hotel a little less miserable than a bush shanty. But where the servants are honest and the cook a success, as seems to have been the case with Mr. and Mrs Arnold, two English people can travel through Persia with the average amount of grumbling. The social life of the country presents many features of interest, and when the traveller can forget facts and look at everything he sees from the artistic point of view, there still lingers in the towns the spirit of the Arabian Nights. Old friends out of the wonderful tales are still to be got in the busy bazaars, haggling over a bargain in that masterly fashion peculiar to the East, or wrapt in what seems to be the deepest contemplation. There is the stalwart porter, the hamal, ready to obey the summons of the mysterious lady, whenever she may appear—the " Hadji," too, in gorgeous turban, cloak and tunic, whom all salute as one who has made his pilgrimage to far-famed Mecca—and the priest or moollah, riding forth on his white donkey and conscious of the power which belongs to his caste. There are still the two great mysteries of Persian life— (we wonder why Mr Wilkie Collins has never turned them to account)— " the veiled lady and the walled up house."

"No Giaour," Mr Arnold writes, “ can see even the eyes of a Persian woman of the middle and superior classes. She moves through the streets and bazaars on her white donkey, or on foot, in complete disguise. Even her husband would not recognise her. She is covered—as I described the women of Resht—from head to foot in the loose chudder of indigo, or black dyed cotton or silk. Over her face there is the long white veil, tied across the chudder, where that envelope covers all but the visage. The legs are hidden in long trousers of cotton or silk of the same colour as the chudder, which are not worn in the house. In all her outdoor life she is a moving mystery. She may be young or old, white or black, fair or ugly on a mission of sin, or upon an errand of mercy, no one knows who she is as she shuffles along upon shoes which are difficult to keep upon her feet, as the upper leather ends far before the heel. She raises at some mud walled house an iron knocker upon a door like that of a fortification, is admitted, the door is closed, and what goes on within that house, what is the fate of the women, the children and the slaves, no one outside can know. There is no window from which they can communicate with the outer world— it is a despotism within a despotism. Each one of these walled houses is the seat of despotic sovereignty—established and confirmed by the greatest power in Persia—that of the Koran." So much for the towns. In journeying down the country from north to south, the travellers greatly enjoyed the scenery, which was as varied as it was grand and beautiful. Persia, according to Mr. Arnold, is the land of magnificent distances. In the summer they saw the mountains of the north, which are rich in metallic ores, glow with a rare and gorgeous beauty in the light of the morning and evening sun, while in winter they passed across the vast heights of the south, where the prospect was bleak and desolate as a scene in the Polar regions. They had a hurried look at the ruins of Persepolis—tombs and halls of the great kings who helped to mould the history of the world—but all that Mr Arnold says on the subject, and much more, may be found in the Five Great Monarchies of Professor Rawlinson.

There are two questions raised by Mr. Arnold in his book to which we must refer before closing this notice. The first is part of a subject which in these days has become chronic—the relation of Russia and England in the East, the reference in this case being especially to Persia. It seems to be a settled idea in the Shah's dominions that Russia and England must of necessity be rivals, and the disposition of the Persian Government is shown by the fact that while there is a preference for England, the representations of Russia on any subject are listened to with marked attention. The reason is not far to seek. Russia has quietly appropriated all the country on the eastern side of the Caspian, and to the south of her possessions in that quarter lies one of the richest and best provinces of Persia, which could be occupied very easily by a Russian army. The Shah does well, therefore, to cultivate friendly relations with that other "shadow of God," Czar Alexander, whose name in the East is associated with a great and mighty potentate. From recent rumours which have reached us, it is not impossible that we may hear something more of Russian influence in Persia and see some of its results. The army of the Shah is not a very effective one, but it would be useful as an ally. Mr. Arnold alludes particularly to the question of commerce. The English entrance to the country is by Bushire on the Persian Gulf, the Russian entrance is by way of the Caspian, to which the railway from St. Petersburg is almost complete ; but as Ispahan, the central point of trade, is much more easily got at from the north than from the south, Russia has it, for the most part, all her own way. This in itself would be no great calamity, except in the eyes of those whose national and commercial creed is summed up in a single phrase—" British interests"—a phrase which is all-powerful at the present moment. The fact is, however, that the policy of Russia, in matters of trade, is eminently short-sighted and selfish. She holds to the worn-out policy of protection, and, having the command of many markets, she forces upon her semi-barbarous neighbours hardware and cotton manufactures of a vastly inferior kind to those of England. On his way down from St Petersburg, Mr Arnold saw that strange sight—the great fair of Nijni Novgorod— and there discovered that Russia supplied the Asiatics with thousands of such articles as knives locks, tools, &c, all of a most inferior kind and all dearer than the same articles of English manufacture— such policy being dictated by the " mistaken belief that this provision of inferior articles to the many for the benefit of the few, is advantageous to the general welfare of the Russian Empire." This of course applies to Persia as well as to other Eastern countries. Mr. Arnold thinks however, that the influence of Russia might be greatly counteracted by our employing a new route. He adopts the suggestion that English goods, instead of being conveyed over a dangerous and difficult road from Bushire viâ Shiraz to Ispahan, should be sent in light steamers up the famed waters of the Tigris and Euphrates as far as Mohommerah, thence by the River Karun to Shuster, and on by mule trains to Ispahan. The gain on the land journey would be about 230 miles a very large distance in a country where railways are unknown. The suggestion, Mr Arnold thinks is a good one both for Persian and British interests. As regards railways, he is doubtful whether they would pay, and whether the Shah's Government could be depended on in the event of concessions being made.

The other point to which we referred is the relation of Mohammedanism to civilisation, —not to ironclads and telegraph wires, bonds and breechloaders but to "the extension of civil rights—the co-existence of the supremacy of law with the liberty of individuals to develop and employ their faculties for their own utmost happiness and advantage." In Persia the Koran is all powerful, as it is in Turkey, and the priests of Islam have more influence than the Government. The Christians are under many disadvantages, and it may be safely asserted that in neither Persia nor Turkey do they enjoy anything like security for life and property. Mr Arnold's statement of the case is exceedingly moderate. The Christians in Turkey more particularly are, he says, often dishonest, not seldom drunken, and of very inferior political capacity. Their priests, like the priests of the Eastern Church generally, are ignorant and bigoted, often immoral. But their vices are such as ages of oppression would produce anywhere, and such, moreover, as religious and political liberty would to a great extent remove. Their religion is a religion of toleration and freedom, when rightly understood and honestly applied. With Islam it is different. The Koran is unmistakably and essentially intolerant, while many of its motives for good conduct on the part of those who believe in it are of the most doubtful character. Mr Arnold, after saying that he has no wish to produce "an impression very favourable to the Christians of Turkey and Persia," closes his interesting book with the following passage :—"For this much I am always prepared to contend ; they do possess and their masters do not possess, a religion which admits of progressive developments and interpretations. The progress of humanity may for all time be illumined by the morals of the gospel of Christ. It is nothing to show that Mahommedanism is more successful in proselytising Eastern peoples than the harshly dogmatic, unchristian 'Christianity' of some dogmatic preachers. We may develope and interpret Christ's teaching as universal, for all sorts and conditions of men, and without distinction of sex. The purest doctrines of liberty entered the world by the mouth of Christ. Mahommedanism is a democracy for men, and not for all men, but only for such as are not slaves; and with these last and lowest the whole sex of women is indirectly placed. The religion of Islam is opposed to progress, and must decline with the irresistible advance of civilisation."

* Through Persia by Caravan. By Arthur Arnold. In two volumes. London : Tinsley Brothers. 1877.

Argus (Melbourne, Vic. ),  1877http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article5929242