A Journey to the Valley of tbe Assassins
hands while the Doctor, portly, urbane, and slow, wrote
for me to his brother in Shutur Khan.
Next morning we started.
The caravan was larger than I had imagined. Not only
had 'Aziz brought Ismail and The Refuge of Allah, two sub-
diarvardars from Alamut, to do the work while he himself
rode like a gentleman: but his mother, an eagle-faced old
woman under a white cotton chadur, and his small sick son,
were also on their way back to Garmrud. It was not my
affair. I paid two tomans (45.) a day and was to be provided
with all I required, including food, for as long as I wished; and
I was pleased with the company of the old lady, who was
cheerful and friendly, would leap a torrent when necessary
as if she were seventeen instead of seventy, and after a day's
riding over the hills, would turn her attention to pilaus
full of almonds and raisins, of which, like Dr. Johnson with
his lemons in the Hebrides, I carried a store at my saddle-bow.
Little Muhammad seemed to be in the last stages of illness,
unfit for riding on mules, and for hard-boiled eggs and
chupattis, and I feared that we might have to bury him by
the way. I gave advice, which was agreed to sadly, and
disregarded: he took my biscuits, and proceeded to eat them
as well as all the rest: and strange to say, got better day by
day. His grandmother held him on her swaying high
perch above the corded baggage, and whenever I turned
round I saw his little peaked face against the receding land-
scape of the Qazvin plain.
The city wail crumbles there amid vines and yellow roses.
We went north-east, and left the road, and made by a rough
track for Ashnistan in the foothills across the desert in
flower. The mountains were on our left. A far peak that
shone with melting snow just showed above the nearer
range whose long unbroken ridge ran brown and level from
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