Page:Kennedy, Robert John - A Journey in Khorassan (1890).djvu/114

 out half way to meet us. After a pleasant three hours' ride in the morning of the 29th of April along a well-cultivated and well-watered valley, we found them at a picturesque caravanserai on the banks of the river Jagerood. After lunch, during which we eagerly devoured the contents of a fresh consignment of letters brought by our grooms from Tehran, we mounted our own good horses for a final gallop home. After passing a well-built and prettily situated shooting-box of the Shah, we entered upon well-known and familiar ground, where we were met by a large party of riders, who had come out about eight miles to welcome the heroine of the expedition, and to congratulate her upon her plucky performances. In their pleasant company we rode gaily into Tehran and dismounted in the Legation gardens, which we had left exactly eight weeks before brown and bare, but which we now found a perfect Garden of Eden, with banks of flowers and streams of water, over which the rich spring foliage of the trees formed a vast green and refreshing bower, to which the eyes of travellers, sore and almost blinded by days and hours