The foreign colony of Kermanshah was not a large one. Besides the Kennions, there were the Russian Consul and his wife, a French Consul, Mr. and Mrs. Stead of the American Presbyterian Mission, and Mr. Hale, local manager of the Imperial Bank of Persia. Hale has travelled widely in Persia, and knew its elusive and nimble-witted people better than most Englishmen. He was an excellent raconteur, and I spent pleasant evenings in his company {107} laughing over stories of adventure which irresistibly called to mind that great exponent of Persian drollery, "Hadji Baba." Leaving our horses behind to be brought on by the marching column, General Byron and six officers, including myself, moved by motor convoy from Kermanshah on April 22nd. With luck we hoped to reach Hamadan in two days. It is twenty-two miles to Bisitun Bridge and the crossing of the Gamasiab, a tributary of the Kara river. The brick bridge over the stream had been destroyed by the retreating Russians. It had not yet been repaired, and we were to be faced with the difficult problem of getting the Ford cars across to the eastern bank of the Gamasiab. The recent rains had done their worst for the road track which led over the great plain of Kermanshah, and the soil had been converted into a kind of pulpy clay which the passage of recent caravans had churned into puddle. The laden cars bravely struggled through it, sinking occasionally to the axles in the treacherous mire. Finally, we crawled out of this bog and struck a patch of hard road which led to the village of Bisitun, where we halted to allow the other bogged cars to join up. Beyond the straggling village of thirty houses or so the great rock of Bisitun rises perpendicularly from the level plain. Bisitun is famous for the inscriptions and tablets of Darius found here. It lies on the highway from Ecbatana to Babylon, and was thus chosen by various {108} monarchs as a fitting place for the record of their exploits. It is to British pluck, tenacity, and will-power that the world owes its definite and detailed knowledge of the Darius inscriptions. That "King of Kings," as he proudly styles himself, saw to it that the written account of his greatness should be at a height corresponding with his fame, and had it placed 300 feet above the ground on the wall of a dizzily perpendicular cliff. To climb this rock near enough to read what Persian workmen chiselled there five hundred years before the Christian era is the dangerous and difficult undertaking accomplished by Rawlinson. The bas-relief tablets and inscriptions on Bisitun's famous cliff wall have all but one object--to glorify Darius Hystaspes ("The great King, the King of Kings, King of Persia, King of the Provinces"), and to give the lie to any of his enemies or rivals who dared to proclaim themselves monarchs also. ("This Gaumata the Magian lied: thus did he speak: 'I am Bardiya; son of Cyrus, I am King!'")