The first Europeans to instruct this rabble were Frenchmen, but England, Russia, Germany, and Austria have all supplied officers and instructors within the past fifty years, without, however, any good result.  Although the arsenal at Teheran is full of the latest improvements in guns and magazine rifles, these are kept locked up, and only for show, the old Brown Bess alone being used.  The Cossack regiment always stationed at Teheran, ostensibly for the protection of the Shah, and officered by Russians, is the only one with any attempt at discipline or order, and is armed with the Berdan rifle.

The Teheran bazaar is, at first sight, commonplace and uninteresting.  Though of enormous extent (it contains in the daytime over thirty thousand souls), it lacks the picturesque Oriental appearance of those of Cairo or Constantinople, where costly and beautiful wares are set out in tempting array before the eyes of the unwary stranger.  Here they are kept in the background, and a European must remain in the place for a couple of months or so, and make friends with the merchants, before he be even permitted to see them.  The position is reversed.  At Stamboul the stranger is pestered and worried to buy; at Teheran one must sometimes entreat before being allowed even to inspect the contents of a silk or jewel stall.  Even then, the owner will probably remain supremely indifferent as to whether the “Farangi” purchase or not.  This fact is curious.  It will probably disappear with the advance of civilization and Mr. Cook.

[Illustration:  TEHERAN]

Debouching from the principal streets or alleys of the bazaar, which is of brick, are large covered caravanserais, or open spaces for the storage of goods, where the wholesale merchants have their warehouses.  The architecture of some of these caravanserais is very fine.  The cool, quiet halls, their domed roofs, embellished with delicate stone carving, and blue, white, and yellow tiles, dimly reflected in the inevitable marble tank of clear water below, are a pleasant retreat from the stifling alleys and sun-baked streets.  Talking of tanks, there seems to be no lack of water in Teheran.  I was surprised at this, for there are few countries so deficient in this essential commodity as Persia.  It is, I found, artificially supplied by “connaughts,” or subterranean aqueducts flowing from mountain streams, which are practically inexhaustible.  In order to keep a straight line, shafts are dug every fifty yards or so, and the earth thrown out of the shaft forms a mound, which is not removed.  Thus a Persian landscape, dotted with hundreds of these hillocks, often resembles a field full of huge ant-hills.  The mouths of these shafts, left open and unprotected, are a source of great danger to travellers by night.  Teheran is provided with thirty or forty of these aqueducts, which were constructed by the Government some years ago at enormous expense and labour.