The "Diplomatist," "Notes from the Persian Diary," (1908)

Below is an excerpt from "Persian Diary, kept by a certain "Diplomatist" during his trip to Persia at the turn of the 20th century. The diary was published in The Atlantic Monthly (1908): 41-53.

The shortest and easiest approach to Teheran is the overland route through Russia to Baku, the centre of the oil region on the west shore of the Caspian. The monotony of this long railroad journey may be broken, however, by leaving the railway at Vladikavkaz, taking a carriage through the magnificent scenery of the Darial Pass to Tiflis, and proceeding thence by the Caucasus line to its eastern terminus at Baku. Or we may avoid European Russia altogether by sailing on one of the Russian steamers from Constantinople through the Bosphorus and Black Sea to Batoum, which is the western extremity of the Caucasus railroad. This route affords glimpses of the Asia Minor coast, at whose cities of Ineboli, Samsun, and Trebizond, the steamer touches; some distant but rather disappointing views of the snow-topped Caucasus range as the train skirts its southern flank; and for the traveler whose enjoyment depends upon recollections of the past as well as visions of the present, there will be memories of the Argonauts and the Golden Fleece, and the Retreat of the Ten Thousand.

The Caucasus route is absolutely free from all danger except as we happen upon such stormy times as recently made the streets of Tiflis and Baku to run with the blood of warring races. Peopled as is the Caucasus with fragments of nations, of semi-nomadic habits and widely differing origins and beliefs, which have wrestled for centuries in bloody conflict, any such relaxing of the governing hand as accompanied the recent Russian disasters in the Far East naturally resulted in an outburst of the underlying race hatreds. But the single governing hand is there, as it is not in the Balkan peninsula, and, so far as the semi-Oriental administration of Russia means pacification, the Caucasus may be said to be pacified.

Tiflis, a generally well-ordered city, whose museum contains a complete collection illustrative of the ethnology, archaeology, and natural history of the region, may well detain the traveler. The West and the East meet here in sharp contrast - meet without mingling. From the broad streets and open squares of the Russian quarter, in whose modern opera house I heard Rubenstein’s Demonio worthily given, one passes without transition to the narrow passageways and crowded bazaars of the old city where Persian, Georgian, and Armenian, Turk, Kurd, and Tartar jostle each other in endless variety of costume and tongue.

Except for its oil wells, which have filled the city with a restless population of adventurers and speculators, Baku contains little of interest. Less Eastern and more commercial than Tiflis, its pretensions to civilization are more offensive than barbarism itself. All genuine civilization, especially of the sanitary kind, is left behind at Tiflis, and it was in the so-called Grand Hotel of Baku, under conditions impossible of description, that I began to devise ways and means for getting my wife into Persia without too great a shock to her sensibilities. So much worse than pure nature is half civilization...