In the afternoon, we went as far as Ali-Schach, a considerable place, with a handsome chan.

We here met with three travellers, who were also going to Tebris.  My guide agreed to travel with them, and that we should start at night.  Their society was not very agreeable to me, for they were well armed, and looked very savage.  I should have preferred waiting until daybreak, and going without them, but my guide assured me that they were honest people; and trusting more to my good fortune than his word, I mounted my horse about 1 o’clock at night.

4th August.  I soon lost my fear, for we frequently met small parties of three or four persons, who would scarcely have ventured to travel at night if the road had been dangerous.  Large caravans also, of several hundred camels, passed us and took up the road in such a way, that we were obliged to wait for half an hour to allow them to pass.

Towards noon we entered a valley in which lay a town, which was certainly large, but of such an unpretending appearance, that I did not at once inquire what was its name.  The nearer we approached the more ruined it appeared.  The walls were half fallen, the streets and squares full of heaps of rubbish, and many of the houses were in ruins; it seemed as if a pestilence or an enemy had destroyed it.  At last I asked its name, and could hardly believe that I had understood it rightly when I was told that it was Tebris.

My guide conducted me to the house of Mr. Stevens, the English consul, who, to my vexation, was not in the town, but ten miles away in the country.  A servant, however, told me that he would go directly to a gentleman who could speak English.  In a very short time he came, and his first questions were:  “How did you come here, alone?  Have you been robbed?  Have you parted from your company and only left them in the town?” But when I gave him my pass, and explained everything to him, he appeared scarcely to believe me.  He thought it bordered upon the fabulous that a woman should have succeeded, without any knowledge of the language, in penetrating through such countries and such people.  I also could not be too thankful for the evident protection which Providence had afforded me.  I felt myself as happy and lively as if I had taken a new lease of my life.

Doctor Cassolani showed me to some rooms in Mr. Stevens’s house, and said that he would immediately send a messenger to him, and I might meanwhile make known my wants to him.

When I expressed to him my astonishment at the miserable appearance and ugly entrance to this town, the second in the country, he told me that the town could not be well seen from the side at which I came in, and that the part which I saw was not considered the town, but was chiefly old and, for the most part, deserted.

CHAPTER XXI.  SOJOURN IN TEBRIS.

DESCRIPTION OF THE TOWN—­THE TOWN—­PERIOD OF FASTING—­BEHMEN MIRZA—­
ANECDOTES OF THE PERSIAN GOVERNMENT—­INTRODUCTION TO THE VICEROY AND
HIS WIFE—­BEHMEN MIRZA’S WIVES—­VISIT TO A PERSIAN LADY—­PERSECUTION
OF THE LOWER CLASSES, OF THE CHRISTIANS, AND OF THE JEWS—­DEPARTURE.