Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/190

 CHAPTER VIII

TEHERAN AND A NEWER PERSIA

' The old order changeth, yielding place to new.'

— Tennyson, Passing of Arthur.

To come back to Teheran seemed like paying a visit home — the streets, the squares, the people, all seemed like old-time friends to greet; and the welcome was a kindly one. Having elsewhere described the main features of the capital in connec- tion with my visit of 1903,^ I shall not enter again into de- tails, but shall mention some of the signs of progress that seemed marked in 1907 and 1910.

One of the first evidences of advance, which had been noticed along the road even before drawing near the city, was the increase in the number of wheeled vehicles for use in the trans- portation of goods, instead of the employment of pack-animals and camels. In this manner transit is immeasurably lightened where the roads are good. In reaching the city gate it seemed novel, and Russian rather than Persian, to have a sentry de- mand of each incomer his name and address, and his whence and whither, for report to the police and military authorities. Yet it must be remembered that Teheran had been under mar- tial rule during the disturbances, and that those ancient * laws of the Medes and Persians,' which knew no change, had at last succumbed to innovation and the establishment of a new regime. In short, we were in the Land of the Parliament.

It has sometimes been thought surprising that Persia, the syn- onym of the abiding East, should be an Asiatic pioneer in adopt- ing a Constitution, for we are likely to forget that Herodotus once

1 See Jackson, Persia, pp. 418-427.

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