EASY STAGES FROM TREBISONDE TO ERZROUME, OWN HORSES. This is the lower road, part of which is very beautiful, though not passable in the winter. The caravanseries offer but wretched accommodation. The other stations are villages, with plenty of food. If with loads or caravan travelling, it will require more time, say 75 hours. It is sometimes reckoned as so many hours: four miles in the hour is good travelling with the same horses. There are many villages which may be branched off to, to vary the road. Thus, from Sulimania to Abdullabad and to Siadeen, from thence to Koramdereh. Again, from Miana to Toorkamanchai. I have gone all the roads, and prefer the former. TRAVELLING EXPENSES. With respect to the expenses of travelling in Persia, so much must depend on the liberality of the traveller, or the honesty of the servants who accompany him, that no rule whatever can be laid down for it. The cost of the Tatar gallop, with four horses, I have already stated, beside the necessary provisioning for the way. From Tehran to Tabreez, being twenty days on the road, with four people and as many horses, I did it comfortably for twenty tomauns (about ten pounds sterling). From Tabreez to Erzroume, about the same time and distance, nearly the same expenses. The " yekdan," or saddle-bags, should contain coffee, sugar, tea, tobacco, rice, and any other dainty that may suit the traveller's taste. On the road he will find bread, eggs, fowls, and "yaourt," or sour milk. Meat will seldom be met with, unless he take a lamb from the flock, or a calf from the stall: this I have often done, hanging the remains to dry at the end of the pack-saddle. An English bridle and saddle is indispensable to comfort; and the traveller must go well armed, a brace of pistols, a gun, and ataghan, being indispensable. If the traveller has any reading propensities, they will be very useful to while away his time at the resting-places. He may smoke at first in self-defence; but he will find at last that it supplies all deficiencies. |