Palmyra now consisted only of a few hundred mud huts and a caravanserai. Having paid a quick visit to this flea-ridden hostelry, Gardane decided that they would fare better if they stayed out of it. So they pitched their tents among the ruins of the great Temple of Baal then, early next morning, started on the considerably longer trek across Mesopotamia to the Euphrates.
It took them eight days to reach the great river at Al-Hadithah: a large town, again consisting of mud huts. Remaining there only for the night, they pushed on along a road of sorts that ran south-east. At times it followed the course of the river for some miles; then, making a great bend, the river would pass out of sight for an hour or two, later to reappear and for a stretch again run parallel with the road. On their second night out from Al-Hadithah they encamped in an oasis on the north shore of Lake Habbanizah and in the morning saw it to be such a large sheet of water that its further shore was out of sight. Early the following evening, July 7th, they entered Babylon, having accomplished over half their journey.
Well pleased with their progress so far, Gardane agreed that they should remain there for two days' rest, and to see something of the fabled city. The caravanserai to which their chief guide took them was patronised by wealthy merchants, so it was reasonably clean and comfortable. The building was oval in shape, enclosing a great central courtyard open to the sky, that had the appearance of both a warehouse and a stable. Innumerable bales, sacks and boxes were piled in the middle, for it was in such places that the merchants bartered the wares they had brought for others to take back to their own cities; and the camels of their caravans were tethered round the sites. The camel men dossed down there to protect their masters' goods from pilferage. Above, there were two tiers of rooms, all with big, arched doorways facing inward. It was in these that the richer patrons of the place both ate and slept, their own servants cooking their meals.
The worst feature of such establishments was the fleas with which they were infested and the stench of the camels. The members of the mission had found the myriads of flies, which in the desert seemed to appear from nowhere, trying enough; but the fleas were a positive pest.
The merchants regarded the strangers with friendly interest and several of them spoke Turkish. Roger learned from one of them that he had just taken over a valuable cargo of china that was consigned to the Sultan, and he undid a sacking wrapping to show Roger a plate. It was Chinese celadon, with a raised design and in a beautiful shade of green.
Another man had just acquired several chests of tea, and Roger, not having enjoyed a cup of tea for many weeks, asked if he might buy some from him. He opened a chest and, to Roger's surprise, its contents did not look at all like tea leaves; they were longer, pale and fluffy. The man explained to him that they were not the leaves, but the flowers of the tea plant, and that even in China only the very rich could afford to buy them. He added that their flavour was so delicate that to have sent them via India by sea would have spoiled it; so the comparatively rare parcels despatched to the West were always sent overland by caravan. Eager to taste such an exotic brew, Roger produced a gold coin, but the merchant refused to take it and insisted on giving him a small, muslin bag full of the precious flowers. When, later, Roger had some water boiled and made the infusion, he found its perfume marvellous and not unlike that of very fine old brandy.
Gardane hired a local guide and, mounted on asses, they went to see the remains left by half a dozen great civilisations; but found them disappointing. There were many groups of broken pillars and arches of sandstone eroded by time. Most of them were half buried, and Roger recalled how, when in Egypt, only the head of the Sphinx had been showing above the desert until Napoleon had had the sand that hid its body cleared away. Such temples as remained were hardly recognisable as such, for their once-splendid courts had become squalid slums, filled with shacks and lean-tos, between which starved-looking chickens were scratching in the dirt. The only impressive sight that remained was the great, pyramid-like Ziggurats, from the tops of which long-dead astrologers had once charted the heavens.
Early on July 10th they proceeded on their way across the fifty miles of desert that separates the Euphrates from the Tigris, where the two great rivers come closest to each other before they join and flow on into the Persian Gulf. Having been ferried over the Tigris, they took another road of sorts that ran in the same direction as the river—south-east—for a hundred and fifty miles. They then left it, but continued on for another fifty along the route of the Silk Road, which, except for a few stretches, was not actually a road at all but a half-mile-wide track of broken surface, where the sand had been churned up by the passage of countless camels, asses and horses that made up the caravans.
Still heading nearly south-east, they entered Persia, skirting the foothills of the northern half of the great Zagros mountain barrier that defends Persia's western frontier until, still in the plain, they came to the considerable city of Dezful. There they were met by officials who had been warned in advance of their approach, and taken to the Governor of the city. Through interpreters he enquired their business and, Gardane having produced papers to show that he was the head of a mission from the Emperor of the French to His Imperial Majesty the Shah, the Governor could not have been more courteous. Nevertheless, he insisted that their baggage must be examined by the Customs and that duty must be paid on all articles subject to tax when imported into Persia. Gardane protested in vain that all Ambassadorial missions were, by custom, exempt from such imposts. The following day he had to pay out a considerable sum before being allowed to proceed—a high percentage of which doubtless went to the Governor. They were soon to learn that in Persia nothing could be done without, in some way or other, greasing somebody's palm.
Some way further on, the road began to mount and wind upwards through a pass. On emerging from it they turned north of cast to cover the last one hundred and twenty miles to Isfahan, and encountered the worst territory they had so far met with.
Persia is the most mountainous country in the world, and no sooner had the Silk Road crossed one chain of mountains than it approached another. For its size, the country also has the fewest rivers. Yet they never lacked for water for their horses or themselves. Every mile or so there were man-made water-holes and the chaoushes they had engaged in Dezful explained to them that two hundred years earlier Shah Abbas the Great had carried out one of the most marvellous irrigation works ever conceived by man. He had had underground pipe-lines laid all over the country, to bring water to every valley; so that, instead of remaining parched desert, it could become fertile and bear crops.
Shah Abbas had also faced up to the terrible problem of his country's climate. The Greek historian Zenophon had quoted the Persian Prince Cyrus as saying, 'The Kingdom of my Father is so great that there is no enduring the Cold on one side of it, nor the Heat in the other', and, in truth, up to the beginning of the seventeenth century the sufferings of travellers in Persia had, in certain seasons, been almost unbearable. But the great Shah had caused to be built many hundred caravanserai where merchants could seek relief—on winter nights from the cold of Dante's Seventh Hell, and at midday in summer the heat of Satan's Kitchen..