For many thousands of years the same sound has been heard on the caravan routes. It is the same with the roar of the waters of the Euphrates and Tigris. Mighty powers have flourished and passed away on their banks, whole peoples have died out, of Babylon and Nineveh only ruins are left; but the waters of the rivers murmur just the same, and the caravan bells ring now as in the days when Alexander led the Macedonian army over the Euphrates and Tigris, when the Venetian merchant Marco Polo travelled 620 years ago between Tabriz and Trebizond by the road we are now driving along, when Timur the Lame defeated the Turks and by this road carried the Sultan Bayazid in an iron cage to exhibit him like a wild beast in the towns of Asia. A white morning cloud seems to be floating over the grey mountains to the east, but when the sun rises it is seen to be a cone as regular as the roof of an Armenian church. It is the snow-capped top of Mount Ararat, where the ark landed when the great flood went down. The summit is always covered with snow, for the mountain is a thousand feet higher than Mont Blanc. Now we are not far from the frontier, where Kurdish brigands render the country unsafe, but once over the border into Persian territory there is no danger. We are now in the north-western corner of Persia, in the province of Azerbeijan, which is populated mainly by Tatars. The capital of the province is Tabriz, once the chief market for the trade of all northern Persia with Europe. Here goods were collected from far and near, packed in mats of bast and bound with ropes so as to form bales, which were laden on fresh camels and carried in fourteen days to Trebizond. Now not more than a fifth part of this trade remains, but still the caravan life is the same, and as varied as ever. The Tatar leader rides in front; beside every seventh camel walks a caravan man, who wears a black lambskin cap, a blue frockcoat, a girdle round the waist, and pointed shoes. Each is armed with a dagger, for the Tatars are often at feud with the Turks and Armenians, and the dagger has a groove on each side of the blade to allow the blood of the victim to run off. Many a caravan leader has spent the greater part of his life in travelling to and fro between Tabriz and Trebizond. On every journey he has seen Ararat to the north of the road, like a perpetually anchored vessel with its mainsail up; and he knows that the mountain is a gigantic frontier beacon which marks the spot where Russia, Turkey, and Persia meet. On December 13 I arrived at Teheran, having driven 800 miles in a month. India was still 1500 miles off, and the route lies almost entirely through deserts where only camels can travel. I therefore bought fourteen fine camels, and took six Persians and a Tatar into my service. FOOTNOTES: [4] A government servant or courier. [5] A light scarf wound round a hat or helmet in tropical countries, especially India. [6] A kind of cloth hood covering the ears. III