Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/182

 CHAPTER VII

ALONG THE HIGHWAY TO THE SHAH'S CAPITAL

Until the next morning he riseth again. '
 * You must rise with the sun and ride with the same,

— Old English Ballads, King John and the Ahhot^ 23.

On to Teheran was our next stage, and the idea of revisiting the Shah's capital, to which I was again to return still later, lent a keen zest to the journey of two hundred miles or more that separate Rasht from the metropolis. The highway now used was constructed by foreign enterprise and is under the control of the Russian Road Company, which runs carriages that make the trip in about forty-eight hours — a vast improve- ment on the old days of the saddle ; and it is believed that the Company will some time supplant these vehicles by a good trolley or automobile service, and eventually by railway trains.

My first transit over the route had been made in the opposite direction, three years before. On the present journey, and again on the third, in 1910, 1 noticed signs of the new regime in Persia, of which the Constitution and the National Assembly, or Parliament, are the outward manifestation. A telephone system had been established along the line of the road, and the 7ia't6, or officer in charge of the post-route, announced at each stage the arrival and departure of the wagon and gave direc- tions to have the horses ready at the next. By a happy chance I found that the manager of the route was a Zoroastrian, as was also his clerk, and the recitation of a few passages from the sacred text of the Avesta proved a wonderful open sesame to attention, so that orders were issued to expedite the changes of relays in every way possible. The drive was accomplished the last time in forty-three hours, though this will be, of course,

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