erally
accompanied by a record of the journey, place of birth, and
destination of the scribbler. Occasionally one was startled by a French
inscription in sickening terms of humility, the work of Persian minor
officials in Government employ, who thus made a public exhibition of
their knowledge of a foreign language and expounded in glowing terms
their servile admiration for superiors.

More interesting were the records of illiterate travellers who, in
default of literature, placed one arm and hand upon the whitewashed wall
and traced their silhouette with the point of a knife or a bit of
charcoal or a brush held in the other hand.

Then came those still more artistically inclined, who ventured into
conventionalised representations of the peacock with widely-expanded
tail--the most favourite and frequent of Persian outbursts of Chappar
khana art, and probably the most emblematic representation of Persian
character. The conventionalised peacock is represented in a few lines,
such as one sees on the familiar Persian brass trays.

The Shah's portrait with luxuriant moustache is met in most Chappar
khanas scraped somewhere upon the wall, and not infrequently other whole
human figures drawn in mere lines, such as children do in our country,
but with a greater profusion of anatomical detail. Very frequent indeed
are the coarse representations of scenes in daily life, which we
generally prefer to leave unrecorded--in fact, the artistic genius of the
Persian traveller seems to run very much in that direction, and these
drawings are generally the most elaborate of all, often showing signs of
multiple collaboration.

Horses fully harnessed are occasionally attempted, but I never saw a
camel represented. Only once did I come across a huge representation of a
ship or a boat. Small birds drawn with five or six lines only, but quite
characteristic of conventionalised Persian art, were extremely common,
and were the most ingeniously clever of the lot. Centipedes and
occasional scorpions were now and then attempted with much ingenuity and
faithfulness of detail but no artistic merit.

All these ornamentations, studied carefully, taught one a good deal of
Persian character. That the Persian is very observant and his mind very
analytical, is quite out of the question, but his fault lies in the fact
that in art as in daily life minor details strike him long before he can
grasp the larger and more important general view of what he sees.