fire, built out of doors. Sometimes, in addition
to this dish, they have a kind of soup, or
"water-meat" (which is the literal translation
of the Persian name), made of water, mutton,
onions, parsley, fowls, rice, dried fruits,
apricots, almonds, and walnuts, stewed
together. But this, as we may guess from
the multiplicity of the ingredients, was a
dainty dish. At four o'clock, the panting
Persians, nearly worn out by the heat of the
day, take a cup of strongly perfumed tea,
with a little bitter-orange juice squeezed into
it; and after this tonic they recover strength
enough to smoke and lounge. Dinner was
the grand meal of the day, to which they
invited friends. It was not unlike breakfast,
but was preceded by a dessert, at which wine
was occasionally introduced, but which always
consisted of melons and dried fruits. The
dinner was brought in on a pewter tray;
but Mr. Burton remarked that the pewter
dishes were very dingy. A piece of common
print was spread on the ground, and cakes of
bread put on it. They had no spoons for the
soup, "water-meat," but soaked their bread
in it, or curled it round into a hollow shape,
and fished up what they could out of the
abyss. At the Mirza's they had spoons for
the sour goat's milk, with ice, which seemed
to be one of their delicacies. The ice is brought
down from the mountains, and sold pretty
cheaply in the bazaars. Sugar and salt are
eaten together with this iced sour goat's milk.
Smoking narghilahs beguiles the evening
hours very pleasantly. They pluck a quantity
of rose-blossoms and put them into the water
through which the smoke passes; but the
roses last in season only a month. Mirza
Oosan Koola had a few chairs in the house
for the use of the gentlemen of the Embassy.

At last the negotiation respecting Mr.
Burton's engagement was ended. His friends
at the Embassy had insisted that the present
Schah should install him in the office of
royal gardener at the salary proposed by his
predecessor. Accordingly, about a month
after his arrival at Teheran, he took
possession of two rooms, appropriated to his
use, in the garden of El Kanai. This
garden consisted of six acres, with a mud
wall all round. There were avenues of fruit
trees planted, with lucerne growing under
them, which was cut for the food of the
horses in the royal stable; but the lucerne
and the trees gave this royal garden very
much the aspect of an English orchard, and
must have been a very disenchanting prospect
for a well-trained gardener, accustomed to
our flower beds, and vegetable gardens. The
fruit trees were apricots, apples, pears, and
cherries—the latter of the same description
as ours, but finer in quality; the apricots
were of a kind which Mr. Burton had never
seen before, with large sweet kernels. He
brought some of the stones with him to
England, and gave them to his old master,
Mr. Knight, if this square plot of orchard-
ground, surrounded by a mud-wall, was the
cheerless prospect outside, the two rooms
which Mr. Burton was to inhabit were not
much more attractive. Bare of all
furniture, with floors of mud and chaff beaten
together, they did not even contain the mats
which play so many parts in Persian houses.
Mr. Burton's first care was to purchase mats,
and hire a servant to market and cook for
him. The people at the Embassy sent him
the various bales of seeds, roots, and
implements, which he had brought with him from
England; and he hoped before long to
introduce some improvements into Persian
gardening; so little did he as yet know the
nature of the people with whom he had to
deal. But before he was well settled in his
two rooms, while he was yet unpacking his
English bales, some native plasterers told him
that, outside of his wooden door (which
fastened only with a slight chain), six men
lay in wait for him to do him evil, partly
prompted by the fact of his being a foreigner,
partly in hopes of obtaining possession of
some of the contents of these bales.

It was two miles to the Embassy, and
Mr. Burton was without a friend nearer; his
very informants would not stand by him, but
would rather rejoice in his discomfiture. But
being a brave, resolute man, he picked
out a scythe from among his English
implements, threw open the door, and began
to address the six men (who, sure enough, lay
couched near the entrance) in the best Persian
he could muster. His Persian eloquence, or
possibly the sight of the scythe wielded by a
stout, resolute man, produced the desired
effect: the six men, fortunately, went away,
without having attacked him, for any effort
at self-defence on his part would have
strengthened the feeling of hostility already
strong against him. Once more he was left
in quiet to unpack his goods, with such shaded
light as two windows covered over with paper
and calico could give. But when his tools
were unpacked—tools selected with such care
and such a hoping heart in England—who
were to use them? The men appointed as
gardeners under him would not work, because
they were never paid. If Mr. Burton made
them work, he should pay them, they said.
At length he did persuade them to labour,
during the hours in which exertion was
possible, even to a native. Mr. Burton
began to inquire how these men were paid,
or if their story was true, that they never
were. It was true that wages for labour
done for the Schah were most irregularly
given. And when the money could no longer
be refused, it was paid in the form of bills
upon some gate to a town, or some public
bath, a hundred or a hundred and twenty
miles away, such gates and baths being royal
property. Honest payment of wages being
rare, of course stealing is plentiful; and it
is even winked at by the royal officers. The
gardeners under Mr. Burton, for instance,