Damgan is ÁrminiusVambésupposed to be the ancient Hecatompylae (city with the hundred gates); a supposition which our archæologists will maintain at every hazard, although the neighbourhood affords no trace of a city to which the hundred gates might have belonged. Of course one must make large deductions from all assertions made by either Greeks or Persians, who rival each other in the noble art of bragging and exaggerating. If we reduce the hundred gates to twenty, it will still remain a matter of considerable difficulty to discover a city of over twenty gates in the obscure spot now called Damgan. The place boasts of scarcely more than a hundred houses, and two miserable caravansaries in the midst of its empty bazaar are sufficient indications that Damgan's reputation for importance in commercial respects is equally unfounded.
From Damgan I travelled over two stations to Simnan, celebrated for its cotton, and still more for its tea-cakes. Almost every town in Persia is conspicuous for some speciality, in the production of which it claims to be not only the foremost in Persia, but unrivalled in the whole world. Shiraz, for instance, is famous for lamb, Isfahan for peaches, Nathenz for pears, and so on. The odd thing about it is, that on arriving in any of these towns and looking for the article so much bragged of, the traveller is either greatly disappointed as to its quality, or, more amusing still, he fails to find the article at all. In Meshed I heard the tea-cakes of Simnan talked of, nay even in Herat; but as I had often had occasion to value these exaggerations at their true worth, I did not expect too much. Nevertheless, I went into the bazaar to inquire after tea-cakes. My search, long and painful, was rewarded by a few mouldy specimens. "Simnan," said one, "is justly celebrated for the excellence of this article, but the export is so tremendous that we are left without any." Another said: "It is true that Simnam was once famous for the production of this article, but hard times have caused even the quality of the tea-cakes to deteriorate." Here at any rate people had the grace to invent some excuses, but in most places not even an apology is attempted; and the unblushing fraud of the pretended claim to the production of some excellent article shows itself without any disguise.