246 JOURNEYS IN PERSIA FABEWELL

FAREWELL IMPRESSIONS OF PERSIA

IN the letters by which this chapter is preceded few
general opinions have been expressed on Persia, its
government, and its people, but now that I contemplate
them with some regard to perspective, and have reversed
some of my earlier and hastier judgments, I will, with
the reader's permission, give some of the impressions
formed during a journey extending over nine months,
chiefly in the western and south-western portions of the
Empire.

On the pillared plain of Persepolis, on the bull-
flanked portals which tower above the Hall of Xerxes,
the Palace of Darius, and the stairways with the sculp-
tured bas-reliefs, which portray the magnificence, the
military triumphs, and the religious ceremonial of the
greatest of the Persian monarchs, runs the stately in-
scription: "I am Xerxes the King, the Great King, the
King of Kings, the King of the many-peopled countries,
the Upholder of the Great World, the son of Darius the
King, the Achsemenian " ; and on the tablets on the rock
of Besitun is inscribed in language as august the claim of
Darius the Mede to a dominion which in his day was
regarded as nearly universal.

The twenty-four centuries which have passed since
these claims were made have seen the ruin, of the Palace-
Temples of Persepolis, the triumph of Islam over Zoro-
astrianism, the devastating sweep of the hordes of Taimur-