Iroquois prosperous settlements in the 19th century, supporting themselves via farming and the sale of sleds, snowshoes, boats, and baskets. In 1884, about 100 Canadian Iroquois were hired by the British government to serve as river pilots and boatmen for the relief expedition for the besieged General Charles Gordon in Khartoum in the Sudan, taking the force commanded by Field Marshal Wolsely up the Nile from Cairo to Khartoum. On their way back to Canada, the Canadian Iroquois river pilots and boatmen stopped in London, where they were personally thanked by Queen Victoria for their services to Queen and Country. In
Iran (word) this very day, the king of Persia is call'd "Padsha Iran" ["padshah"='king'], and the great vizier, "Iran Medary" [i.e. "medari"='facilitator'], the Pole of Persia"". Since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the official name of the country is "Islamic Republic of Iran". Iran (word) The modern Persian name of Iran () derives immediately from 3rd-century Sassanian Middle Persian (Pahlavi spelling: "ʼyrʼn"), where it initially meant "of the Iranians", but soon also acquired a geographical connotation in the sense of "(lands inhabited by) Iranians". In both geographic and demonymic senses, "ērān" is distinguished from its antonymic "anērān", meaning "non-Iran(ian)". In the geographic