Page:Historyofpersiaf00watsrich.djvu/48

28 meat three or four times a week, if they cannot afford to eat of it every day. In the autumn they salt mutton for the winter consumption. They enjoy a plentiful supply of milk, cheese, and rice. Mutton is usually sold at from twopence to threepence to the pound. Rice is the article of food most in demand; vegetables are cheap, and of various kinds; and fruit, including grapes, mulberries, melons, and water-melons, is in the summer and autumn months exceedingly abundant, and to be had at the lowest imaginable prices. Sherbets and ice are within the means of the poorest people, and, altogether, in respect of diet, the condition of the labouring man in Persia can bear a favourable comparison with that of the peasant of most other countries.

Much has been said and written regarding the oppression to which the country population in Persia are subjected from those placed in authority over them, or from powerful personages who may pass through their districts. But, whatever may be the case in other parts of the country, in the immediate neighbourhood of the capital the rural population are not subjected to much habitual tyranny. They pay their contributions towards the support of the Government, and supply their proportion of soldiers for the army, and if any one attempt to put exactions upon them they can make their voice heard by their landlords, or, if necessary, by the Shah himself, who has recently established a way for receiving