'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎38] (69/714)

38
PERSIA
the halting-places or stations, which are serviceable brick structures
containing decent accommodation for the night, being Kavandeh,
Kishlak, Yenghi Imam, Hissarek, and Shahabad. It would be a
mistake to suppose that this carriage-road at all resembles anything
which might be called by the same name in Europe. It is simply
a cleared width of ground, off which the surface stones have been
picked, but which lias neither been metalled nor levelled. It is
freely intersected by irrigation ditches, and in parts might be
mistaken for the track of a switchback railway. And yet the
cost of this unique work is reported to have been 640Z. a mile!
At Teheran, if no other quarters have been prearranged or offered,
the traveller will find two small hotels in a very central position
near the big Meidan, kept by a Frenchman named Prevot, who
was formerly confectioner to the Shall.
The old postal road, which the devotee of the chapar may
prefer to follow, runs to the south of the carriage road, the chapar-
Post-ii Ichanehs being at Abdulabad, Safar Khojah or Khwajah,
road Sunkurabad, and Mianjub. At Karij on this route,
between the two last stations, and 2G miles from Teheran,
is situated a palace or shooting-lodge, called Suleimanieh, belong
ing to the Shah, and built by his great grandfather, Fath Ali
Shah, in ]812. 1 It stands upon the banks of the Karij, a fine
stream which emerges from a gorge in the mountains, and whose
water Fath Ali had conveyed to him in skins every morning to
Teheran ; and it contains two large portrait panels by Abdullah
Khan, the famous Court painter of the earlier Kajar sovereigns,
representing the Courts respectively of Agha Mohammed Shah
and of his nephew, Fath Ali Shah. 2
Those who are journeying by caravan may possibly be conducted
by their muleteers over yet other routes between Kazvin and the
Caravan capital, the choice depending upon the season of the
routes year and the price of fodder. The option of so many
alternative routes will of itself suggest to the newcomer that he
is in a country where the ordinary channels of communication do
1 It was being built when Sir Gore Ouseley and Morier marched this way on
the return of the former from his mission to Teheran in May, 1812 (Morier's
Second Journey, p. 199), and is said both to have been named from and paid for
out of the proceeds of a successful raid upon the Kurdish district of Suleimanieh
by one of the sons of Fath Ali Shah.
2 For a description of this road to Teheran vide Eastwick, Journal of a
Diplomate, vol. 1. pp. 213-217.