Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/185

 much reduced when electricity and steam are at last brought into use.

On our second trip, however, we were following in the trail of the post, which had gone on just ahead ; and as a consequence we were delayed eight hours for horses at the stupid station of Giidun or Godon (sometimes jestingly called * Go-down ' by the English), a few miles beyond Rasht, whose rice-fields and thatch-canopied huts we had left in the afternoon. But the evening air was pleasant, and the sky beautifully clear and starlit, while the nightingales' trill, which one learns to love in Persia, gave a soft tremor to the atmosphere. The high-pitched chant of a Mullah intoning the Kuran chimed in with a certain harmony ; but suddenly the melody was broken by the hoarse croaking of a hundred frogs in a neighboring pool. This reminded me of an anecdote told of the Persian mystic, Jalal ad-Din Rumi, who lived in the thirteenth century. On one occasion he was expounding his veiled and exalted doctrines to a throng of ab- sorbed listeners gathered near the bank of a shady pond, when unexpectedly the discordant croak and gurgling chug of a band of frogs interrupted the discourse. Gravely approaching the marge, he is said to have bidden the frogs be still. Instantly silence reigned and the sage continued his sermon, undisturbed to the end. He then bade the croakers resume their concert again, which they lustily did, and have continued ever since. ^ Just now, unfortunately, we missed Jalal's voice to silence the noisy crew, so that we were forced to listen resignedly to the jarring antiphony of frogs and priest until sleep overcame both them and ourselves, and we sank into the heavy slumber of exhaustion.

The great bells of the camels were soon donging, and the rasping bray of the donkeys, mingled with the calls of their drivers, announced that the caravans were already on the road. Forth we issued into the dark and drove briskly along till the shafts of the spears of dawn lifted the flaps of night's tent to

1 See Redhouse, Mesnevi ofJeldlu-'d-din Bumi, introd. p. 62, London, 1881.

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