Government; and everything in the shape of a
mule that could stand was first brought for his inspection. By good
luck, however, I managed to get together half a dozen sorry-looking
beasts; but they suited the purpose well enough. The price of these
animals varies very much in Persia. They can be bought for as little
as L4, while the best fetch as much as L60 to L80.

Those were pleasant days at Shiraz. One never tired of wandering about
the outskirts of the city and through the quiet, shady gardens and
"cities of the silent," as the Persians call their cemeteries;
for, when the solemn stillness of the latter threatened to become
depressing, there was always the green plain, alive from morning till
night with movement and colour, to go back to. Early one morning,
awoke by the sound of a cracked trumpet and drums, I braved the dust,
and followed a Persian regiment of the line to its drill-ground.
The Persian army numbers, on a peace footing, about 35,000 men, the
reserve bringing it up to perhaps twice that number.

Experienced military men have said that material for the smartest
soldiery in the world is to be found in Persia. If so, it would surely
be the work of years to bring the untrained rabble that at present
exists under discipline or order of any kind. The regiment whose
evolutions or antics I witnessed at Shiraz was not in the dress of
the Russian cossack or German uhlan, as at Teheran, but in the simple
uniform of the Persian line--dark-blue tunic, with red piping; loose
red-striped breeches of the same colour, stuffed into ragged leather
gaiters; and bonnets of black sheepskin or brown felt (according to
the taste of the wearer), with the brass badge of the lion and sun.
All were armed with rusty flint-locks.

As regards smartness, the officers were not much better than the
men, who did not appear to take the slightest notice of the words of
command, but straggled about as they pleased, like a flock of sheep.
Some peasants beside me were looking on. "Sons of dogs!" said one;
"they are good for nothing but drunkenness and frightening women and
children." There is no love lost between the army and the people in
Persia--none of the enthusiasm of other countries when a regiment
passes by; and no wonder. The pay of a Persian soldier is, at most, L3
a year, and he may think himself lucky if he gets a quarter of that
sum. _En revanche_, the men systematically plunder and rob the
wretched inhabitants of every vill