Page:Kennedy, Robert John - A Journey in Khorassan (1890).djvu/16

 to it from all quarters of Persia, and the pious dead are carried thither for burial in coffins slung upon the backs of mules. The presence of corpses in a caravan reveals itself with unpleasant pungency to the traveller who meets or catches up the laden mules. What Mecca is to the Mussulman Sunis, that Meshed is to the Mussulman Sheites.

Last year, after much diplomatic pressure, the Russians succeeded in establishing in the city a Consul-General, and this privilege having been conceded to one nation, a similar privilege was immediately claimed by the British Government, who obtained the recognition by the Shah of Major-General MacLean, the Viceroy of India's agent on the Perso-Afghan frontier, as Her Majesty's Consul-General, to reside in Meshed itself.

The post held by General MacLean may be described as that of an outpost sentinel, whose duty it is to watch and report upon the Russian advance from the Caspian on one side, and Turkestan on the other, which, begun a quarter of a century ago, and increasing in velocity year by year, threatens to crush, or, rather, to absorb the