In a most unlikely spot, on a long stretch of sand in the Yezd Desert, I met a well-dressed dervish in clean, cool white clothes, who stopped on perceiving that I was a ‘Firanghi,’ and, gently swaying his neat dervish-dole dish, said quietly, ’Charity; alms are as dew-drops from the heavens,’ a most appropriate speech in the sandy waterless waste.  Membership with the higher dervish orders appears to signify and convey something of the character of Freemasonry.  I know of one highly-placed Persian gentleman who is a dervish, and also of a European gentleman of Oriental light and learning who has been admitted to the same order.  A famous Prime Minister of Persia in past time, Haji Mirza Aghasi, was a well-known but rather eccentric dervish.  My knowledge of this was the means, on one occasion, of averting a disagreeable display of violence by a gay sort of madcap, the relative of a post-house master, who had attached himself as groom to the stable establishment.  My smart Armenian servant, who was equally good as groom or table attendant, had taken off his warm pea-jacket to help in bracing up the loads on my baggage post-horses, which were to be driven loose at a canter, the usual practice when riding post with extra baggage.  A powerful, merry-talking groom, who came forward with the horses, picked up the jacket and put it on, saying that the morning was cold.  And so it was, for the month was November.  When all was ready for a start, my servant asked him for the jacket, but the laughing diwana, or eccentric fellow, said it was a gift to him, and refused to part with it.  Warm words passed, and I intervened and told him to drop his dervish ways and give back the jacket.  The diwana became excited, and shouted to all who were standing by that I had called him a dervish, and had hurt his feelings badly.  I then told him he was hard to please, as surely a High Vazir was good enough to be compared with, for was it not true that the famous Haji Mirza Aghasi was of the noble order of dervishes.  He took in slowly what I said, then smiled, and gave back the jacket with a good grace.  The Persians have a proverb similar to our own regarding giving to beggars, ‘Avval khesh, baad darvesh’ (First our own, then the beggar.  Charity begins at home).

The ordinary Persian horses are small, but very wiry and enduring.  In harness they are also capable of very long journeys in light draught, as proved in the carriage service between Tehran and Kasvin.  The distance is about ninety-seven miles, divided into six stages.  On arriving at one of these, I found that all the posting horses had been taken by a Russian Mohammedan merchant who was travelling ahead of me in great style, with five carriages.  I had two vehicles, one a carriage for myself, and the other a tarantass for my servant and luggage, each drawn by three horses.  There was considerable traffic on the road then, and the horses had only a few hours in the stable between ‘turns.’