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CHAPTER III FEOM THE PERSIAN FRONTIEE TO TABEIZ " Cht khush bdshad ki bad az intiylri Bi-ummidl rasad ummulcdri ! " ' ' How good it is when one with waiting tired Obtaineth that which he hath long desired ! " (Sa'di.) " Kunj-i-' uzlat, ki (ilismdt-i-'qjd'ib ddrad, Fat-h-i-dn dar nayir-i-himmat-i-darvishdn-ast." " The talisman of macic might, hid in some ruinjs lonely site, Emerges from its ancient night at the mild glanSe of dervishes." ix, rendered by Herman Bicknell.) There is always a pleasant sense of excitement and expectation in entering for the first time a foreign country. Especially is this the case when to visit that country has long been the object of one's ambition. Yet that which most sharply marks such a transition, and most forcibly reminds the traveller that he is amongst another race I mean a change of language is not observable by one who enters Persia from the north-west; for the inhabitants of the province of Azarbaijdn, which forms this portion of the Persian Empire, uniformly employ a dialect of Turkish, which, though differing widely from the speech of the Ottoman Turks, is not so far removed from it as to render either language unintelligible to those who speak the other. If, amongst the better classes in the towns of Azarbaijun, and here and there in the villages, the Persian language is understood or spoken, it is as a foreign tongue acquired by study or travel ; while the narrow, affected enunciation of the vowels, so different from the bold, broadpronunciation of Persia proper, and the introduction of the Y-sound after K and G, at once serve to mark the province to which the speaker belongs. It is not till Kazvin is reached, and only iour or five stagesseparate the traveller from Teheran, that the Persian distinctly ...
