occasion.
Believers and unbelievers alike sobbed and lamented. The chiefs and
notables who had congregated were struck with wonder. Emotions were
stirred to such depths as no tongue can describe, nor could any observer
escape their contagion."

Mounted on His steed, a red roan stallion of the finest breed, the best
His lovers could purchase for Him, and leaving behind Him a bowing
multitude of fervent admirers, He rode forth on the first stage of a
journey that was to carry Him to the city of Constantinople. "Numerous
were the heads," Nabil himself a witness of that memorable scene,
recounts, "which, on every side, bowed to the dust at the feet of His
horse, and kissed its hoofs, and countless were those who pressed forward
to embrace His stirrups." "How great the number of those embodiments of
fidelity," testifies a fellow-traveler, "who, casting themselves before
that charger, preferred death to separation from their Beloved! Methinks,
that blessed steed trod upon the bodies of those pure-hearted souls." "He
(God) it was," Baha'u'llah Himself declares, "Who enabled Me to depart out
of the city (Ba_gh_dad), clothed with such majesty as none, except the
denier and the malicious, can fail to acknowledge." These marks of homage
and devotion continued to surround Him until He was installed in
Constantinople. Mirza Yahya, while hurrying on foot, by his own choice,
behind Baha'u'llah's carriage, on the day of His arrival in that city, was
overheard by Nabil to remark to Siyyid Muhammad: "Had I not chosen to hide
myself, had I revealed my identity, the honor accorded Him (Baha'u'llah)
on this day would have been mine too."

The same tokens of devotion shown Baha'u'llah at the time of His departure
from His House, and later from the Garden of Ridvan, were repeated when,
on the 20th of _Dh_i'l-Qadih (May 9, 1863), accompanied by members of His
family and twenty-six of His disciples, He left Firayjat, His first
stopping-place in the course of that journey. A caravan, consisting of
fifty mules, a mounted guard of ten soldiers with their officer, and seven
pairs of howdahs, each pair surmounted by four parasols, was formed, and
wended its way, by easy stages, and in the space of no less than a hundred
and ten days, across the uplands, and through the defiles, the woods,
valleys and pastures, comprising the picturesque scenery of eastern
Anatolia, to the port of Samsun, on the Black Sea. At times on horseback,
at times resting in