The streets are very narrow, and look narrower just now, because the snow is heaped almost to the top of the mud walls, which are not broken up as in Turkish towns by projecting lattice windows, but are absolutely blank, with the exception of low-arched entrances to the courtyards within, closed by heavy, unpainted wooden doors, studded with wooden nails. The causeways, on which, but for the heaps of slippery snow two men might walk abreast, have a ditch two or three feet wide between them, which is the roadway for animals. There are some open spaces, abounding in ruinous heaps, others where goods are unloaded, surrounded with warehouses, immense brick bazars with domed roofs, a citadel or ark, where the Governor lives, a large parade ground and barracks for 2000 men, mosques of no pretensions, public baths, caravanserais, brick warehouses behind the bazars, public gardens, with fountains and avenues of poplars, a prison, and some good houses like this one, hidden behind high mud walls. Although the snow kindly veils a good deal of deformity, the city impresses one as ruinous and decayed; yet it has a large trade, and is regarded as one of the most prosperous places in the Empire.[16]

The bazars are spacious and well stocked with European goods, especially with Manchester cottons of colours and patterns suited to Oriental taste, which loves carnation red. There are many Jews, otherwise the people are Shiah Moslems, with an increasing admixture of the secret sect of the Bābis. In some respects the Shiahs are more fanatical than the Sunnis, as, for instance, it is quite possible to visit a mosque in Turkey, but here a Christian is not allowed to cross the threshold of the outer gate. Certain customs are also more rigidly observed. A Persian woman would be in danger of death from the mob if she appeared unveiled in the streets. When I walked through the town, though attended by a number of men, the major-domo begged me to exchange my gauze veil for a mask, and even when I showed this deference to custom the passing through the bazars was very unpleasant, the men being decidedly rude, and inclined to hoot and use bad language. Even the touch of a Christian is regarded as polluting, and I nearly got into trouble by handling a "flap-jack," mistaking it for a piece of felt. The bazars are not magnificent. No rich carpets or other goods are exposed to view for fear of exactions. A buyer wanting such things must send word privately, and have them brought to his house.

Justice seems to be here, much as in Turkey, a marketable commodity, which the working classes are too poor to buy. A man may be kept in prison because he is too poor to get out, but justice is usually summary, and men are not imprisoned for long terms. If prisoners have friends, the friends feed them, if not they depend on charity, and charity is a Moslem virtue. There is no prison here for women. They are punished by having their heads shaved, and by being taken through the town on asses. Various forms of torture are practised, such as burning with hot irons, the bastinado, and squeezing the fingers in a vice. The bastinado is also most extensively used as a punishment.

Yesterday by appointment we were received by the Governor of the Province. Riding through the slippery snow-heaped alleys is not what Europeans would think of, and our host with his usual courtesy humoured the caprice by walking with us himself, preceded by six farāshes (lit. carpet-spreaders) and followed by his purse-bearer casting money to the poor, and a train of servants. The Citadel, or Governor's residence, like all else, is forlorn, dirty, and ruinous in its approaches, which are long vaulted corridors capable of much adornment. Crowds of soldiers, mollahs, dervishes, and others were there to see the visit, which was one of ceremony. The Palace and Government offices are many-windowed, well-built brick-and-tile buildings, arranged round a large place with trees and fountains.

Two little fellows in scarlet uniform were at the entrance, and the lobby upstairs was crowded with Persian and Negro servants, all in high, black lambskin caps, tight black trousers, and tight coats with full skirts. The Governor received us in a very large, lofty, vacant-looking room, and shook hands. I never saw a human being more nearly like an ape in appearance, and a loud giggle added to the resemblance. This giggle and a fatuous manner are possibly assumed, for he has the widespread reputation of being a very able man, shrewd in business and officially rapacious, as was his father before him. The grotesque figure, not more than five feet high, was dressed in a black Astrakan cap, a coat of fine buff Russian kerseymere with full skirts, and tight trousers of the same, and an under-coat of rich, Kerman silk brocade, edged with costly fur. He made a few curt remarks to his foreign guests, and then turned to Abdul Rahim, and discussed local affairs for the remainder of a very long visit.

A table covered with exquisite-looking sweetmeats was produced, and we were regaled with tea à la Russe in Russian glasses, ice-cream, and gaz. Then young, diminutive, raw-looking soldiers in scarlet coats and scarlet trousers with blue stripes marched into the courtyard, and stood disconsolately in the snow, and two bands brayed and shrieked for an hour. Then kalians were smoked, and coffee was handed round, the cups being in gold filigree holders incrusted with turquoises. This was the welcome signal for the termination of a very tedious visit. The reception-room is a dismal combination of Persian and European taste, invariably a failure. The carpets are magnificent, but the curtains are common serge bordered with white cotton lace, and the tea-table with its costly equipments was covered with a tawdry cretonne cover, edged with some inferior black cotton lace. The lofty walls of plain plaster of Paris have their simplicity destroyed by some French girandoles with wax grapes hanging from them.

The Governor returned the visit to-day, arriving on horseback with fully forty mounted attendants, and was received in a glass room on the roof, furnished with divans, tables covered with beautiful confectionery, and tea and coffee equipages. The conversation was as local as yesterday, in spite of our host's courteous efforts to include the strangers in it. The Governor asked if I were going to Tihran to be Hakīm to the Shah's haram, which our host says is the rumour in Kirmanshah! During such visits there are crowds of attendants in the room all the time pouring out tea, filling kalians, and washing cups on the floor, and as any guest may be a spy and an enemy, the conversation is restricted to exaggerated compliments and superficial remarks.

Everything is regulated by an elaborate code of etiquette, even the compliments are meted out by rule, and to give a man more than he is entitled to is understood to be intended as sarcasm. The number of bows made by the entertainer, the distance he advances to meet his guest, and the position in which he seats him are matters of careful calculation, and the slightest mistake in any particular is liable to be greatly resented by a superior.

The Persian is a most ceremonious being. Like the Japanese he is trained from infancy to the etiquette of his class, and besides the etiquette of class there is here the etiquette of religion, which is far more strict than in Turkey, and yields only when there is daily contact, as in the capital, between Moslems and Christians. Thus, a Moslem will not accept refreshments from a Christian, and he will not smoke a pipe after a Christian even if he is his guest, and of equal or higher rank.

The custom is for a visitor, as in the case of the Governor, to announce his visit previously, and he and his train are met, when he is the superior, by a mounted servant of the recipient of the honour, who precedes him to the door, where the servants are arranged according to their rank, and the host waits to take his hand and lead him to a seat. On entering the room a well-bred Persian knows at once what place he ought to take, and it is rare for such a fiasco as that referred to in Luke xiv. 9 to occur. Refreshments and pipes are served at regulated intervals, and the introduction of a third cup of tea or coffee and a third kalian is the signal for the guest to retire. But it is necessary to ask and receive permission to do so, and elaborate forms of speech regulated by the rank of the visitor are used on the occasion. If he is of equal or superior rank, the host, bowing profoundly, replies that he can have no other wish than that of his guest, that the house has been purified by his presence, that the announcement of the visit brought good luck to the house, that his headache or toothache has been cured by his arrival, and these flowery compliments escort the ordinary guest to the door, but if he be of superior rank the host walks in advance to the foot of the stairs, and repeats the compliments there.

The etiquette concerning pipes is most elaborate.[17] Kalians are invariably used among the rich. The great man brings his own, and his own pipe-bearer. The kalian is a water pipe, and whatever its form the principle is the same, the smoke being conducted to the bottom of a liberal supply of water, to be sucked up in bubbles through it with a gurgling noise, as in the Indian "hubble-bubble." This water-holder is decanter-shaped, of plain or cut glass, with a wide mouth; the fire-holder, as in the case of the Governor's pipe, is often a work of high art, in thin gold, chased, engraved, decorated with repoussé work, or incrusted with turquoises, or ornamented with rich enamel, very costly, £40 or even £50 being paid by rich men for the decoration of a single pipe-head. Between this and the water-holder is a wooden tube about fourteen inches long, from one end of which an inner tube passes to the bottom of the water. A hole in the side of the tube admits the flexible smoking tube, more used in Turkey than in Persia, or the wooden stem, about eighteen inches long. The fire-holder is lined with clay and plaster of Paris. Besides these there is the wind-guard, to prevent the fire from falling or becoming too hot, usually of silver, with dependent silver chains, and four or six silver or gold chains terminating in flat balls hang from the fire-holder.

The kalian is one of the greatest institutions of Persia. No man stirs without it, and as its decoration gives an idea of a man's social position, immense sums are lavished upon it, and the pipe-bearer is a most important person. The lighting is troublesome, and after all there seems "much ado about nothing," for a few whiffs exhaust its capacities.

The tobacco, called tumbaku, which is smoked in kalians is exceptionally poisonous. It cannot be used the first year, and improves with age, being preserved in bags sewn up in raw hide. Unless it is moistened it produces alarming vertigo. When the kalian is required, about three-quarters of an ounce is moistened, squeezed like a sponge, and packed in the fire-holder, and morsels of live charcoal, if possible made from the root of the vine, are laid upon it and blown into a strong flame. The pipe-bearer takes two or three draws, and with an obeisance hands it with much solemnity to his master. Abdul Rahim smokes three or four pipes every evening, and coffee served with the last is the signal for his departure.

A guest, if he does not bring his own pipe and pipe-bearer has a kalian offered to him, but if the host be of higher rank any one but an ignoramus refuses it till he has smoked first. If under such circumstances a guest incautiously accepts it, he is invariably mortified by seeing it sent into the ante-room to be cleaned and refilled before his superior will smoke. If it be proper for him to take it, he offers it in order of rank to all present, but takes good care that none accept it till he has enjoyed it, after which the attendant passes it round according to rank. In cases of only one kalian and several guests, they smoke in order of position, but each one must pay the compliment of suggesting that some one else should smoke before himself. The etiquette of smoking is most rigid. I heard of a case here in which a mollah, who objected to smoke after a European, offered it to one after he had smoked it himself—so gross a piece of impertinence that the other called the pipe-bearer, saying, "You can break that pipe to pieces, and burn the stick, I do not care to smoke it," upon which the mollah, knowing that his violation of etiquette merited this sharp rebuke, turned pale and replied, "You say truly, I have eaten dirt."

The lower classes smoke a coarse Turkish tobacco, or a Persian mild sort looking like whitish sawdust, which is merely the pounded leaf, stalk, and stem. The pipe they use and carry in their girdles has a small iron, brass, or clay head, and a straight cherry-wood stick, with a very wide bore and no mouthpiece, and it is not placed in the teeth but is merely held between the lips. Smoking seems a necessity rather than a luxury in Persia, and is one of the great features of social life.

Kirmanshah is famous for its "rugs," as carpets are called in this country. There are from twenty-five to thirty kinds with their specific names. Aniline dyes have gone far to ruin this manufacture, but their import is now prohibited. A Persian would not look at the carpets loosely woven and with long pile, which are made for the European market, and are bought just now from the weavers at 13s. the square yard. A carpet, according to Persian notions, must be of fast colours, fine pile, scarcely longer than Utrecht velvet, and ready to last at least a century. A rug can scarcely be said to have reached its prime or artistic mellowness of tint till it has been "down" for ten years. The permanence of the dyes is tested by rubbing the rug with a wet cloth, when the worthless colours at once come off.

Among the real, good old Persian carpets there are very few patterns, though colouring and borders vary considerably. A good carpet, if new, is always stiff; the ends when doubled should meet evenly. There must be no creases, or any signs on the wrong side of darning or "fine-drawing" having been resorted to for taking out creases, and there must be no blue in the white cotton finish at the ends. Carpets with much white are prized, as the white becomes primrose, a colour which wears well. Our host has given me a rug of the oldest Persian pattern, on a white ground, very thin and fine. Large patterns and thick wool are comparatively cheap. It is nearly impossible to say what carpets sell at, for if one has been made by a family and poverty presses, it may be sold much under value, or if it is a good one and they can hold on they may force a carpet fancier to give a very high price. From what Abdul Rahim says, the price varies from 13s. to 50s. a square yard, the larger carpets, about fourteen feet by eight feet, selling for £40.[18]

Abdul Rahim took me to see carpet-weaving, a process carried on in houses, hovels, and tents by women and children. The "machinery" is portable and marvellously simple, merely two upright beams fixed in the floor, with a cross-beam near the top and bottom, round which the stout cotton or woollen threads which are the basis of the carpet are stretched. The wools are cut in short lengths and are knotted round two threads, according to the pattern, which, however elaborate, the weaver usually carries in her head. After a few inches have been woven in this simple way the right side is combed and the superfluous length cut off with rough scissors. Nothing can be more simple than the process or more beautiful than the result. The vegetable dyes used are soft and artistic, specially a madder red and the various shades of indigo. A soft turquoise blue is much used, and an "olive green," supposed to be saffron and indigo. The dull, rich tints, even when new, are quite beautiful. The women pursue this work chiefly in odds and ends of time, and in some cases make it much of a pastime. Men being present they were very closely veiled, and found great difficulty in holding on the chadars and knotting the wool at the same time.

After taking tea in the pleasant upper room of the carpet-weaver's house, we visited the large barracks and parade ground. The appearance of the soldiers could not possibly impress a stranger favourably. They looked nothing better than "dirty, slouching ragamuffins," slipshod, in tattered and cast-off clothes of all sorts, on the verge of actual mendicancy, bits of rusty uniform appearing here and there amongst their cotton rags. The quarters are not bad. The rank and file get one and a half pounds of bread daily and five rupees a month nominally, but their pay is in arrears, and they eke it out by working at different trades. These men had not been drilled for two months, and were slovenly and unsoldierly to a degree, as men must be who have no proper pay, rations, instruction, clothing, or equipments.

The courtesy of the host leaves nothing unthought of. In returning from a long stroll round the city a wet place had to be crossed, and when we reached it there were saddle-horses ready. On arriving at dusk in the bazar several servants met us with lanterns. The lantern is an important matter, as its size is supposed to indicate the position of the wearer. The Persian lantern has a tin or iron top and bottom, between which is a collapsible wired cylinder of waxed muslin. The light from the candle burning inside is diffused and soft. Three feet long and two feet wide is not an uncommon size. They are carried close to the ground, illustrating "Thy Word is a lamp unto my path," and none but the poor stir out after dark without a lantern-bearer in front. Our lanterns, as befits the Vakil's position, are very large.

There is something Biblical in the progress of Abdul Rahim through the streets, always reminding me of "greetings in the market-place," and "doing alms to be seen of men,"—not that I think our kind host sins in either direction. "Peace be with you," say the people, bending low. "To you be peace," replies the Agha.

A wish having been expressed to visit the rock-sculptures of the Takt-i-Bostan, a winter picnic was quietly arranged for the purpose. There was a great snowstorm on the night we arrived, succeeded by intense frost and clear blue skies,—glorious Canadian winter weather. Outside the wall an English landau, brought in pieces from Baghdad, awaited us, with four Arab horses, two of them ridden. There were eleven outriders and some led horses, and a Turki pipe-bearer rode alongside the carriage with two cylinders of leather containing kalians in place of holsters, on one side, behind a leather water-bottle, and on the other a brazier of lighted charcoal hanging by chains much below the horse's body. Another pipe-bearer lighted the kalian at intervals and handed it into the carriage to his master. Some of the horsemen carried rifles and wore cartridge-belts.

Reaching the Karasu river we got out into deep mud, were ferried over in a muddy box hauling on a rope, and drove to the Takt-i-Bostan, where several tanks of clear water, a house built into the rock, a number of Kurds on fine horses, the arched recesses in the rock which contain the sculptures, and the magnificent range of the Jabali-Besitun formed a very striking scene.

Sir H. Rawlinson considers these sculptures the finest in Persia, and regards them as the work of Greek artists. The lower of the two bas-reliefs at the back of the main recess is a colossal figure of a king on horseback, "the staff of whose spear is as a weaver's beam." On the sides of the recess, and, like the equestrian figure, in very high relief and very much undercut, are scenes from the chase of a most spirited description, representing a king and court mounted on elephants, horses, and camels, hunting boars, stags, and other animals, their enthusiasm in the pursuit being successfully conveyed by the art of the sculptor. In the spandrels of the archway of the main recess are carved, winged female figures. In the smaller arch, also containing a bas-relief, is a Pehlevi inscription.[19]

There is a broad stone platform in front of the arch, below which flows direct from the mountain a great volume of water, which replenishes the tanks. The house, which also contains a tank fed by the same living water, the mountain and its treasures, the tanks, and some miles of avenues of willows, have been bought by the Vakil, and his son laughingly says that he hopes to live to see a time when Cook will give "tourist excursion tickets" by rail to the Takt-i-Bostan!

Coffee and kalians were served to the Kurds in the arch, and mounting the horses we rode to a country house belonging to our host in the midst of large rose gardens, and with a wonderful view of the magnificent Besitun range, of the rolling snowy hills on which Kirmanshah and its plantations lay like a black splotch, and of this noble plain, six miles long from north to south, and thirty from east to west, its absolutely unbroken snow gleaming like satin, and shadows lying upon it in pure blue. Many servants and a large fire awaited us in that pleasant bungalow, as well as coffee and sweetmeats, and we stayed there till the sinking sun flushed all the surrounding hills with pink, and the gray twilight came on.

I rode a splendid Arab, with a neck "clothed with thunder," a horse to make one feel young again, with his elastic stride and pride of bearing, but indeed I "snatched a fearful joy," for the snow was extremely slippery, and thirteen Arab horses in high condition restrained to a foot's pace had belligerent views of their own, tending to disconcert an unwary rider. We crossed the Karasu by a deep and devious ford up to the girths, and had an exhilarating six miles' ride by moonlight in keen frost, the powdery snow crackling under the horses' feet. It was too slippery to enter the town on horseback, but servants with lanterns awaited us at the gates and roaring fires and dinner were ready here, after a delightful expedition.

I dined alone with our host, Hadji, who understands and speaks English fairly well, acting as interpreter. Abdul Rahim at once plunged into politics, and asked very many intelligent questions about English politics and parties, the condition and housing of our working classes, and then about my own family and occupations. He is a zealous Moslem, and the pious phrases which sit so oddly on Hadji come very naturally from his lips. In reply to a sketch of character which I gave him he said: "What God does is good. He knows, we submit. He of whom you speak laid up great treasure for another life. Whoso loves and befriends the poor is acceptable to God. One day we shall know all. God is good." He said he had been too busy to learn English, but that he understands a great deal, and added, with a roguish gleam lighting up his whole face, and a very funny laugh, "And I hear what M—— says." He has seen but very few English ladies, and it shows great quickness of apprehension that he should never fail in the respectfulness and quiet courteous attentions which would be shown to a lady by an English host.

Even after India, the quantity of servants employed in such a household as this is very impressive. Besides a number who are with the Vakil in Tihran, there are the nazr or steward, who under the master is supreme, cooks and their assistants, table servants, farāshes, who are sweepers and message-runners, in any number, pipe-bearers, coffee and ice-makers, plate-cleaners, washermen, lamp-cleaners, who are also lantern-bearers, a head groom, with a groom for each horse under him, and a number more, over forty in all, receiving, if paid at the usual rate of wages in Kirmanshah, which is a cheap place, from sixty krans a month down to twenty, the kran being now about 8d. These wages do not represent the actual gains of a servant, for he is entitled to perquisites, which are chiefly in the form of commissions on things bought and sold by his master, and which are regarded as legitimate if they do not exceed 10 per cent. It is of no use to fight again this "modakel," or to vex one's soul in any way about it. Persians have to submit to it as well as Europeans. Hadji has endeavoured to extract from 50 to 80 per cent on purchases made by him for me, but this is thought an outrage.

This modakel applies to all bargains. If a charvadar (no longer a katirgi) is hired, he has to pay one's servant 10 per cent on the contract price. If I sell a horse, my servant holds out for a good price, and takes his 10 per cent, and the same thing applies to a pair of shoes, or a pound of tea, or a chicken, or a bottle of milk. The system comes down from the highest quarters. The price paid by the governor of a province to the Shah is but the Shah's modakel, and when a governor farms the taxes for 60,000 tumans and sells them for 80,000, the difference is his modakel, and so it goes on through all official transactions and appointments, and is a fruitful source of grinding oppression, and of inefficiency in the army and other departments. The servant, poor fellow, may stop at 10 per cent, but the Shah's servant may think himself generous if he hesitates at 50 per cent. I have heard it said that when the late Shah was dying he said to the present sovereign: "If you would sit long upon the throne, see that there is only one spoon among ten men," and that the system represented by this speech is faithfully carried out.

I. L. B.

LETTER VI

Kirmanshah, Feb. 2.

On January 28 there was a tremendous snowfall, and even before that the road to Hamadan, which was our possible route, had been blocked for some days. The temperature has now risen to 31°, with a bitter wind, and much snow in the sky. The journey does not promise well. Two of the servants have been ill. I am not at all well, and the reports of the difficulties farther on are rather serious. These things are certain,—that the marches are very long, and without any possibility of resting en route owing to mud or snow, and that the food and accommodation will be horrible.

Hadji is turning out very badly. He has fever now, poor fellow, and is even more useless than usual. Abdul Rahim does not like him to interpret, and calls him "the savage." He does no work, and is both dirty and dishonest. The constant use of pious phrases is not a good sign either of Moslem or Christian. I told him this morning that I could not eat from so dirty a plate. "God is great," he quietly answered. He broke my trestle bed by not attending to directions, and when I pointed out what he had done, he answered, "God knows all, God ordains all things." It is really exasperating.

It is necessary to procure an additional outfit for the journey—a slow process—masks lined with flannel, sheepskin bags for the feet, the thick felt coats of the country for all the servants, additional blankets, kajawehs for me, and saddle-horses. The marches will frequently be from twenty to thirty miles in length, and the fatigue of riding them at a foot's pace when one cannot exchange riding for walking will be so great that I have had a pair of kajawehs made in which to travel when I am tired of the mule. These panniers are oblong wooden boxes, eighteen inches high, with hoops over them for curtains. One hangs on each side of the mule on a level with his back, and they are mounted, i.e. they are scrambled into from the front by a ladder, which is carried between them. Most women and some men travel in them. They are filled up with quilts and cushions. The mule which is to carry them is a big and powerful animal, and double price is charged for him.

Horses are very good and cheap here. A pure Arab can be bought for £14, and a cross between an Arab and a Kurdish horse—a breed noted for endurance—for even less. But to our thinking they are small, never exceeding fifteen hands. The horses of the Kirmanshah province are esteemed everywhere, and there is a steady drain upon them for the Indian market. The stud of three horses requires a groom, and Abdul Rahim is sending a sowar, who looks a character, to attend us to Tihran. A muleteer, remarkable in appearance and beauty, and twelve fine mules have been engaged. The sowar and several other men have applied to me for medicine, having fearful coughs, etc., but I have not been fortunate enough to cure them, as their maladies chiefly require good feeding, warm bedding, and poultices, which are unattainable. It is pitiable to see the poor shivering in their thin cotton clothes in such weather. The men make shift with the seamless felt coats—more cloaks than coats, with long bag-like sleeves tapering to the size of a glove but with a slit midway, through which the hands can be protruded when need arises. The women have no outer garment but the thin cotton chadar.

I have tried to get a bed made, but there is no wood strong enough for the purpose, and the bazars cannot produce any canvas.

Sannah, Feb. 5.—Yesterday we were to have started at nine, but the usual quarrelling about loads detained us till 10.30, so that it was nearly dark when we reached the end of the first stage of a three weeks' journey. From the house roof the prospect was most dismal. It was partly thawing, and through the whiteness of the plain ran a brown trail with sodden edges, indicating mud. The great mass of the Jabali-Besitun, or Behistun, or Behishtan, though on the other side of the plain, seemed actually impending over the city, with its great black rock masses, too steep to hold the snow, and the Besitun mountain itself, said to be twenty-four miles away, looming darkly through gray snow clouds, looked hardly ten. Our host had sent men on to see if the landau could take me part of the way at least; but their verdict was that the road was impassable.

After much noise the caravan got under way, but it was soon evident that the fine mules we had engaged had been changed for a poor, sore-backed set, and that the fine saddle-mule I was to have had was metamorphosed into a poor weak creature, which began to drop his leg from the shoulder almost as soon as we were outside the walls, and on a steep bridge came down on his nose with a violent fall, giving me a sharp strain, and fell several times afterwards; indeed, the poor animal could scarcely keep on his legs during the eight hours' march.

Hadji rode in a kajaweh, balanced by some luggage, and was to keep close to me, but when I wanted to change my broken-down beast for a pannier he was not to be seen, then or afterwards, and came in late. The big mule had fallen, he was bruised, the kajawehs were smashed to pieces, and were broken up for firewood, and I am now without any means of getting any rest from riding! "It's the pace that kills." In snow and mud gallops are impossible, and three miles an hour is good going.

An hour from Kirmanshah the road crosses the Karasu by a good brick bridge, and proceeds over the plain for many miles, keeping the Besitun range about two miles on the left, and then passes over undulating ground to the Besitun village. Two or three large villages occur at a distance from the road, now shut in, and about eight miles from Besitun there are marble columns lying on the ground among some remains of marble walls, now only hummocks in the snow.

The road was churned into deep mud by the passage of animals, and the snow was too deep to ride in. My mule lost no opportunity of tumbling down, and I felt myself a barbarian for urging him on. Hills and mountains glistened in all directions. The only exception to the general whiteness was Piru, the great rock mass of Besitun, which ever loomed blackly overhead through clouds and darkness, and never seemed any nearer. It was very solitary. I met only a caravan of carpets, and a few men struggling along with laden asses.

It was the most artistic day of the whole journey, much cloud flying about, mountains in indigo gloom, or in gray, with storm clouds round their heads, or pure white, with shadows touched in with cobalt, while peaks and ridges, sun-kissed, gleamed here and there above indigo and gray. Not a tree or even bush, on them or on the plain, broke the monotony after a summer palace of the Shah, surrounded by poplars, was passed. There is plenty of water everywhere.

As the sun was stormily tinging with pink the rolling snow-clouds here and there, I halted on the brow of a slope under the imposing rock front of Besitun to wait for orders. It was wildly magnificent: the huge precipice of Piru, rising 1700 feet from the level, the mountains on both sides of the valley approaching each other, and behind Piru a craggy ravine, glorified here and there by touches of amber and pink upon the clouds which boiled furiously out of its depths. In the foreground were a huge caravanserai with a noble portal, a solitary thing upon the snow, not a dwelling, but offering its frigid hospitality to all comers; a river with many windings, and the ruinous hovels of Besitun huddled in the mud behind. An appalling view in the wild twilight of a winter evening; and as the pink died out, a desolate ghastliness fell upon it. As I waited, all but worn out by the long march, the tumbling mule, and the icy wind, I thought I should like never to hear the deep chimes of a Persian caravan, or see the huge portal of a Persian caravanserai any more. These are cowardly emotions which are dispelled by warmth and food, but at that moment there was not much prospect of either.

Through seas of mud and by mounds of filth we entered Besitun, a most wretched village of eighteen hovels, chiefly ruinous, where we dismounted in the mixed snow and mud of a yard at a hovel of three rooms vacated by a family. It was a better shelter than could have been hoped for, though after a fire was made, which filled the room with smoke, I had to move from place to place to avoid the drip from the roof.

Hadji said he was ill of fever, and seemed like an idiot; but the orderly said that the illness was shammed and the stupidity assumed in order not to work. I told him to put the mattress on the bed; "Pour water on the mattress," he replied. I repeated, "Put—the—mattress—on—the—bed," to which he replied, "Put the mattress into water!" I said if he felt too ill for his work he might go to bed. "God knows," he answered. "Yes, knows that you are a lazy, good-for-nothing, humbugging brute"—a well-timed objurgation from M——, which elicited a prolonged "Ya Allah!" but produced no effect, as the tea and chapatties were not relatively but absolutely cold the next morning.

The next day dawned miserably, and the daylight when it came was only a few removes from darkness, yet it was enough to bring out the horrors of that wretched place, and the dirt and poverty of the people, who were a prey to skin diseases. Many readers will remember that Sir H. Rawlinson considers that there are good geographical and etymological reasons for identifying Besitun with the Baghistan, or Place of Gardens of the Greeks, and with the famous pleasure-grounds which tradition ascribes to Semiramis. But of these gardens not a trace remains. A precipitous rock, smoothed at its lower part, a vigorous spring gushing out at the foot of the precipice, two tablets, one of which, at a height of over 300 feet, visible from the road but inaccessible, is an Achæmenian sculpture portraying the majesty of Darius, with about a thousand lines of cuneiform writing, are all that survive of the ancient splendours of Besitun, with the exception of some buttresses opposite the rock, belonging to a vanished Sasanian bridge over the Gamasiab, and some fragments of other buildings of the Sasanian epoch. These deeply interesting antiquities have been described and illustrated by Sir H. Rawlinson, Flandin and Coste, and others.

It has been a severe day. It was so unpromising that a start was only decided on after many pros and cons. Through dark air small flakes of snow fell sparsely at intervals from a sky from which all light had died out. Gusts of icy wind swept down every gorge. Huge ragged masses of cloud drifted wildly round the frowning mass of Piru. Now and then the gusts ceased, and there was an inauspicious calm.

I rode a big mule not used to the bit, very troublesome and mulish at first, but broken in an hour. A clear blink revealed the tablets, but from their great altitude the tallest of the figures only looked two feet high. There is little to see on this march even under favourable circumstances. A few villages, the ruined fort of Hassan Khan, now used as a caravanserai, on a height, the windings of the Gamasiab, and a few canals crossed by brick bridges, represent its chief features. Impressions of a country received in a storm are likely to be incorrect, but they were pleasurable. Everything seemed on a grand scale: here desolate plateaus pure white, there high mountains and tremendous gorges, from which white mists were boiling up—everything was shrouded in mystery—plain prose ceased to be for some hours.

The others had to make several halts, so I left the "light division" and rode on alone. It became dark and wild, and presently the surface of the snow began to move and to drift furiously for about a foot above the ground. The wind rose to a gale. I held my hat on with one half-frozen hand. My mackintosh cape blew inside out, and struck me such a heavy blow on the eyes that for some time I could not see and had to trust to the mule. The wind rose higher; it was furious, and the drift, not only from the valley but from the mountain sides, was higher than my head, stinging and hissing as it raced by. It was a "blizzard," a brutal snow-laden north-easter, carrying fine, sharp, hard-frozen snow crystals, which beat on my eyes and blinded them.

After a short experience of it my mule "turned tail" and needed spurring to make him face it. I fought on for an hour, crossed what appeared to be a bridge, where there were a few mud hovels, and pressed on down a narrower valley. The blizzard became frightful; from every ravine gusts of storm came down, sweeping the powdery snow from the hillsides into the valley; the mountains were blotted out, the depression in the snow which erewhile had marked the path was gone, I could not even see the mule's neck, and he was floundering in deep snow up to the girths; the hiss of the drift had increased to a roar, the violence of the storm produced breathlessness and the intense cold numbness. It was dangerous for a solitary traveller, and thinking that M—— would be bothered by missing one of the party under such circumstances, I turned and waited under the lee of a ruinous mud hovel for a long, long time till the others came up—two of the men having been unhorsed in a drift.

In those hovels there were neither accommodation nor supplies, and we decided to push on. It was never so bad again. The wind moderated, wet snow fell heavily, but cleared off, and there was a brilliant blue heaven with heavy sunlit cloud-wreaths, among which colossal mountain forms displayed themselves, two peaks in glorious sunlight, high, high above a whirling snow-cloud, which was itself far above a great mountain range below. There were rifts, valleys, gorges, naked, nearly perpendicular rocks, the faces of mountains, half of which had fallen down in the opposite direction, a snow-filled valley, a winding river with brief blue stretches, a ruined fort on an eminence, a sharp turn, a sudden twilight, and then another blizzard far colder than the last, raging down a lateral ravine, up which, even through the blinding drift, were to be seen, to all seeming higher than mountains of this earth, the twin peaks of Shamran lighted by the sun. I faced the blizzard for some time, and then knowing that Hadji and the cook, who were behind me, would turn off to a distant village, all trace of a track having disappeared, I rode fully a mile back and waited half an hour for them. They were half-frozen, and had hardly been able to urge their mules, which were lightly laden, through the snow, and Hadji was groaning "Ya Allah!"

The blizzard was over and the sky almost cloudless, but the mercury had fallen to 18°, and a keen wind was still blowing the powdery snow to the height of a foot. I sent the two men on in front, and by dint of calling to them constantly, kept them from getting into drifts of unknown depth. We rode up a rising plateau for two hours—a plateau of deep, glittering, blinding, trackless snow, giving back the sunshine in millions of diamond flashings. Through all this region thistles grow to a height of four feet, and the only way of finding the track was to look out for a space on which no withered thistle-blooms appeared above the snow.

This village of Sannah lies at an altitude of about 5500 feet, among poplar plantations and beautiful gardens, in which fine walnut trees are conspicuous. Though partly ruinous it is a flourishing little place, its lands being abundantly watered by streams which run into the Gamasiab. It is buried now in snow, and the only mode of reaching it is up the bed of a broad sparkling stream among the gardens. The sowar met us here, the navigation being difficult, and the "light division" having come up, we were taken to the best house in the village, where the family have vacated two rooms, below the level of a yard full of snow. The plateau and its adjacent mountains were flushed with rose as we entered Sannah, and as soon as the change to the pallor of death came on the mercury raced down to zero outside, and it is only 6° in the room in which I am writing.

There is a large caravanserai at the entrance to Sannah, and I suspect that the sowar in choosing private quarters bullies the ketchuda (headman) and throws the village into confusion, turning the women and children out of the rooms, the owners, though they get a handsome sum for the accommodation, having to give him an equally handsome modakel.

After nearly nine hours of a crawling pace and exposure to violent weather, I suffered from intense pain in my joints, and was dragged and lifted in and put into a chair. I write "put," for I was nearly helpless, and had to take a teaspoonful of whisky in warm milk. While the fire was being made two women, with a gentle kindliness which won my heart, chafed my trembling, nearly frozen hands with their own, with kindly, womanly looks, which supplied the place of speech.

I lay down under a heap of good blankets, sorry to see them in thin cotton clothes, and when I was less frozen observed my room and its grotesquely miserable aspect, "the Savage" never taking any trouble to arrange it. There are no windows, and the divided door does not shut by three inches. A low hole leads into the granary, which is also the fowl-house, but the fowls have no idea of keeping to their own apartment. Two sheep with injured legs lie in a corner with some fodder beside them. A heap of faggots, the bed placed diagonally to avoid the firehole in the floor, a splashed tarpaulin on which Hadji threw down the saddle and bridle plastered with mud, and all my travelling gear, a puddle of frozen water, a plough, and some ox yokes, an occasional gust of ashes covering everything, and clouds of smoke from wood which refuses to do anything but smoke, are the luxuries of the halt. The house is full of people, and the women come in and out without scruple, and I am really glad to see them, though it is difficult to rouse Hadji from his opium pipe and coffee, and his comfortable lounge by a good fire, to interpret for them.

The day's experiences remind me of the lines—

But tired and benumbed as I am I much prefer a march with excitements and difficulties to the monotony of splashing through mud in warm rain.

Hamilabad, Feb. 7.—The next morning opened cloudless, with the mercury at 18°, which was hardly an excuse for tea and chapatties being quite cold. I was ready much too early, and the servants having given out that I am a Hakīm, my room was crowded with women and children, all suffering from eye diseases and scrofula, five women not nearly in middle life with cataract advanced in both eyes, and many with incurved eyelids, the result of wood smoke. It was most painful to see their disappointment when I told them that it would need time to cure some of them, and that for others I could do nothing. Could I not stay? they pleaded. I could have that room and milk and eggs—the best they had. "And they lifted up their voices and wept." I felt like a brute for leaving them. The people there showed much interest in our movements, crowding on the roofs to see our gear, and the start.

The order of march now is—light division, three mules with an orderly, Hadji, and the cook upon them, the two last carrying what is absolutely necessary for the night in case the heavy division cannot get on. M—— and an orderly, the sowar, Abbas Khan, another who is changed daily, the light division and I, sometimes start together; but as the others are detained by work on the road, I usually ride on ahead with the two servants.

To write that we all survived the march of that day is strange, when the same pitiless blast or "demon wind," blowing from "the roof of the world"—the Pamir desert, made corpses of five men who started with a caravan ahead of us that morning. We had to climb a long ascending plateau for 1500 feet, to surmount a pass. The snow was at times three feet deep, and the tracks even of a heavy caravan which crossed before us were effaced by the drift in a few minutes.

A sun without heat glared and scintillated like an electric light, white and unsympathetic, out of a pitiless sky without a cloud. As soon as we emerged from Sannah the "demon wind" seized on us—a steady, blighting, searching, merciless blast, no rise or fall, no lull, no hope. Steadily and strongly it swept, at a temperature of 9°, across the glittering ascent—swept mountain-sides bare; enveloped us at times in glittering swirls of powdery snow, which after biting and stinging careered over the slopes in twisted columns; screeched down gorges and whistled like the demon it was, as it drifted the light frozen snow in layers, in ripples, in waves, a cruel, benumbing, blinding, withering invisibility!

The six woollen layers of my mask, my three pairs of gloves, my sheepskin coat, fur cloak, and mackintosh piled on over a swaddling mass of woollen clothing, were as nothing before that awful blast. It was not a question of comfort or discomfort, or of suffering more or less severe, but of life or death, as the corpses a few miles ahead of us show. I am certain that if it had lasted another half-hour I too should have perished. The torture of my limbs down to my feet, of my temples and cheekbones, the anguish and uselessness of my hands, from which the reins had dropped, were of small consequence compared with a chill which crept round my heart, threatening a cessation of work.

There were groans behind me; the cook and Hadji had rolled off into the snow, where Hadji was calling on Him "who is not far from every one of us." M—— was on foot. His mask was frozen hard. He was using a scientific instrument, and told his orderly, an Afghan, a smart little "duffadar" of a crack Indian corps, to fasten a strap. The man replied sadly, "I can't, Sahib." His arms and hands were useless. My mask was frozen to my lips. The tears extorted from my eyes were frozen. I was so helpless, and in such torture, that I would gladly have lain down to die in the snow. The mercury fell to 4°.

After fighting the elements for three hours and a half, we crossed the crest of the pass at an altitude of 7000 feet, to look down upon a snow world stretched out everywhere, pure, glistering, awful; mountains rolling in snowy ranges, valleys without a trace of man, a world of horror, glittering under a mocking sun.

Hadji, with many pious ejaculations, gasped out that he was dying (in fact, for some time all speech had been reduced to a gasp); but when we got over the crest there was no more wind, and all the benumbed limbs resumed sensation, through an experience of anguish.

The road to Kangawar lies through a broad valley, which has many streams. Among the mountains which encompass it are the Kuh-i-Hassan, Boka, the Kuh-i-Paran, and the Kuh-i-Bozah. I rode on with the two servants, indulging in no higher thoughts than of the comfort I should have in lying down, when just in front of me Hadji turned a somersault, my alpenstock flying in one direction and the medicine chest in another, while he lay motionless, flat on his back with all his limbs stretched out, just as soldiers who have been shot lie in pictures. In getting to him my mule went down in a snow-drift, out of which I extricated him with difficulty. I induced Hadji, who said his back was broken, and was groaning and calling on Allah, to get up, and went on to secure his mule, which had the great pack-saddle under its body, and was kicking with all its might at my bed and "hold-all," which were between its hind legs, and succeeded in catching and holding it till Hadji came up. I told him to unfasten the surcingle, for the animal was wild with the things among its legs, and he wrung his hands and beat his breast, exclaiming, "God is great! God knows I shall never see Bushire again!" and was quite helpless. Seeing a caravan of asses approaching, I rode on as fast as I could to the well-situated little town of Kangawar, expecting him to follow shortly. At present the entrance into Kangawar is up the bed of a stream.

We had been promised good accommodation there, and the town could evidently afford it, but Abbas Khan had chosen something very wretched, though it was upstairs, and had an extensive snow view. Crumbling, difficult stairs at each end of a crumbling mud house led to rooms which barely afforded a shelter, with a ruinous barn between, where the servants, regardless of consequences, kept up a bonfire. A man shovelled most of the snow out of my room, and tried to make a fire but failed, as neither he nor I could stand the smoke produced by the attempt. This imperfect shelter had a window-frame, with three out of its four wooden panes gone, and a cracked door, which could only ensure partial privacy by being laid against the posts from the outer landing, which was a flat roof. The wall was full of cracks big enough for a finger, through which the night wind rioted in a temperature 5° below zero.

There was nothing to sit upon, and I walked up and down for two hours, half-frozen, watching the straggling line of the caravan as it crawled along the valley, till the sunset flush changed into the chill blue-gray of twilight. Hadji arrived with it, having broken his girth after I left him. There was not much comfort after the severe march, owing to the draughts and the smoke, but one is always hungry and sleepy, and the hybernation of the insects makes up for any minor discomforts. It was so cold that some water in a cup froze before I could drink it, and the blanket over my face was hard frozen.

Kangawar was full of mourning. The bodies of two men and a boy, who had perished on the plain while we were struggling up the pass, had been brought in. This boy of twelve was "the only son of his mother and she was a widow." He had started from Kangawar in the morning with five asses laden with chopped straw to sell for her, and had miserably perished. The two men were married, and had left families.

Kangawar is a town of a thousand people built below a high hill, on some natural and artificial mounds. Some traditions regarding Semiramis are localised there, and it is supposed to be on the site of Pancobar, where she erected a temple to Anaitis or Artemis. Ruins of a fortress, now snow-buried, occupy the crest of a hill above the town, and there are other ruins, regarded by antiquaries as Grecian, representing a temple or palace, "a vast building constructed of enormous blocks of dressed stone." Of these remains I saw nothing but some columns and a pilaster, which are built into the miserable mud walls of a house near the bazar.

At night the muleteers were beseeching on their knees. They said that they could not go on, that the caravan which had attempted to leave Kangawar in the morning had put back with three corpses, and that they and their mules would perish. In the morning it was for some time doubtful whether they could be induced or bribed to proceed. The day was fine and still, but they said that the snow was not broken. At last they agreed to start if we would promise to return at the first breath of wind!

Every resource against cold was brought out and put on. One eye was all that was visible of the servants' faces. The charvadars relied on their felt coats and raw sheepskins, with the fur inside, roped round their legs. There is danger of frost-bite even with all precautions. In addition to double woollen underclothing I put on a pair of thick Chitral socks over two pairs of woollen stockings, and over these a pair of long, loose Afghan boots, made of sheepskin with the fur inside. Over my riding dress, which is of flannel lined with heavy homespun, I had a long homespun jacket, an Afghan sheepskin coat, a heavy fur cloak over my knees, and a stout "regulation" waterproof to keep out the wind. Add to this a cork helmet, a fisherman's hood, a "six-ply" mask, two pairs of woollen gloves with mittens and double gauntlets, and the difficulty of mounting and dismounting for a person thus swaddled may be imagined! The Persians are all in cotton clothes.

However, though they have no "firesides," and no cheerful crackle and blaze of wood, they have an arrangement by which they can keep themselves warm for hours by the expenditure of a few handfuls of animal fuel. The fire hole or tāndūr in the middle of the floor is an institution. It is circular, narrows somewhat at the top and bottom, has a flue leading to the bottom from the outside, and is about three feet deep and two in diameter. It is smoothly lined with clay inside.

Over this is the karsi or platform, a skeleton wooden frame like an inverted table, from two to five feet square, covered with blankets or a thickly-wadded cotton quilt, which extends four or five feet beyond it. Cushions are placed under this, and the women huddle under it all day, and the whole family at night, and in this weather all day—the firepot in the hole giving them comfortable warmth both for sleeping and waking. They very rarely wash, and the karsi is so favourable for the development of vermin that I always hurry it out of the room when I enter. So excellent and economical is the contrivance, that a tāndūr in which the fire has not been replenished for eighteen hours has still a genial heat.

It was a serious start, so terribly slippery in the heaped-up alleys and uncovered bazars of Kangawar that several of the mules and men fell. Outside the town was a level expanse of deep, wrinkled, drifted, wavy, scintillating snow, unbroken except for a rut about a foot wide, a deep long "mule ladder," produced by heavily-laden mules and asses each stepping in its predecessor's footsteps, forming short, deep corrugations, in which it is painful and tedious for horses or lightly-laden animals to walk. For nine hours we marched through this corrugated rut.

Leaving on the left the summer route to Tihran viâ Hamadan, which is said to have been blocked for twenty days, we embarked upon a glittering plain covered with pure snow, varying in depth from two feet on the level to ten and fifteen in the drifts, crossed by a narrow and only slightly beaten track.

Ere long we came on solemn traces of the struggle and defeat of the day before: every now and then a load of chopped straw thrown away, then the deep snow much trampled, then the snow dug away and piled round a small space, in which the charvadars had tried to shelter themselves from the wind as the shadows of death fell, then more straw, and a grave under a high mound of snow; farther on some men busy burying one of the bodies. The air was still, and the sun shone as it had shone the day before on baffled struggles, exhaustion, and death. The trampling of the snow near the track marked the place where the caravan had turned, taking three out of the five bodies back to Kangawar. The fury with which the wind had swept over the plain was shown by the absolute level to which it had reduced the snow, the deep watercourses being filled up with the drifts.

After crossing a brick bridge, and passing the nearly buried village of Husseinabad, we rode hour after hour along a rolling track among featureless hills, till in the last twilight we reached the village of Pharipah, a low-lying place ("low-lying" must never be understood to mean anything lower than 5000 feet) among some frozen irrigated lands and watered gardens. I arrived nearly dead from cold, fatigue, and the severe pains in the joints which are produced by riding nine hours at a foot's pace in a temperature of 20°. My mule could only be urged on by spurring, and all the men and animals were in a state of great fatigue. My room was very cold, as much of one side was open to the air, and a fire was an impossibility.

Except for the crossing of a pass with an altitude of 7500 feet, the next day's route was monotonous, across plains, among mountains, all pure white, the only incidents being that my chair was broken by the fall of a mule, and that my mule and I went over our heads in a snow-drift. The track was very little broken, and I was four hours in doing ten miles.

Hamilabad is a village of about sixty mud hovels, and in common with all these mountain hamlets has sloping covered ways leading to pens under the house, where cattle, sheep, and goats spend much of the winter in darkness and warmth.

I have a house, i.e. a mud room, to myself. These two days I have had rather a severe chill, after getting in, including a shivering lasting about two hours, perhaps owing to the severe fatigue; and I was lying down with the blankets over my face and was just getting warm when I heard much buzzing about me, and looking up saw the room thronged with men, women, and children, just such a crowd as constantly besieged our blessed Lord when the toilsome day full of "the contradiction of sinners against Himself" was done, most of them ill of "divers diseases and torments," smallpox, rheumatism, ulcers on the cornea, abortive and shortened limbs, decay of the bones of the nose, palate, and cheek, tumours, cancers, skin maladies, ophthalmia, opaque films over the eyes, wounds, and many ailments too obscure for my elementary knowledge. Nothing is more painful than to be obliged to say that one cannot do anything for them.

I had to get up, and for nearly two hours was hearing their tales of suffering, interpreted by Hadji with brutal frankness; and they crowded my room again this morning. All I could do was to make various ointments, taking tallow as the basis, drop lotion into some eyes, give a few simple medicines, and send the majority sadly away. The sowar, Abbas Khan, is responsible for spreading my fame as a Hakīm. He is being cured of a severe cough, and comes to my room for medicine (in which I have no faith) every evening, a lean man with a lean face, lighted with a rapacious astuteness, with a kaftan streaming from his brow, except where it is roped round his shaven skull, a zouave jacket, a skirt something like a kilt, but which stands out like a ballet dancer's dress, all sorts of wrappings round his legs, a coarse striped red shirt, a double cartridge-belt, and a perfect armoury in his girdle of pistols and knives. He is a wit and a rogue. Dogs, deprived of their usual shelter, shook my loose door at intervals all night. This morning is gray, and looks like change.

Nanej, Feb. 9.—It was thawing, and the march here was very soft and splashy. The people are barbarous in their looks, speech, manners, and ways of living, and have a total disregard of cleanliness of person, clothing, and dwellings. Whether they are actually too poor to have anything warmer than cotton clothing, or whether they have buried hoards I do not know; but even in this severe weather the women of this region have nothing on their feet, and their short blue cotton trousers, short, loose, open jackets, short open chemises, and the thin blue sheet or chadar over their heads, are a mere apology for clothing.

The journey yesterday was through rolling hills, enclosing level plains much cultivated, with villages upon them mostly at a considerable distance from the road. I passed through two, one larger and less decayed than usual, but fearfully filthy, and bisected by a foul stream, from which people were drinking and drawing water. Near this is a lofty mound, a truncated cone, with some "Cyclopean" masonry on its summit, the relics of a fire temple of the Magi. Another poorer and yet filthier village was passed through, where a man was being buried; and as I left Hamilabad in the morning, a long procession was escorting a corpse to its icy grave, laid on its bedding on a bier, both these deaths being from smallpox, which, though very prevalent, is not usually fatal, and seldom attacks adults. Indeed, it is regarded as a childish malady, and is cured by a diet of melons and by profuse perspirations.

A higher temperature had turned the path to slush, and made the crossing of the last plain very tedious. This is an abominable village, and the thaw is revealing a state of matters which the snow would have concealed; but it has been a severe week's journey, and I am glad of Sunday's rest even here. It is a disheartening place. I dismounted in one yard, in slush up to my knees, and from this splashed into another, round which are stables, cowsheds, and rooms which were vacated by the ketchuda and his family, but only partially, as the women not only left all their "things" in my room, but had a godown or storehouse through it, to which they resorted continually. I felt ill yesterday, and put on a blister, which rendered complete rest desirable; but it is not to be got. The room filled with women as soon as I settled myself in it.

They told me at once that I could not have a fire unless I had it under the karsi, that the smoke would be unbearable. When I asked them to leave me to rest, they said, "There's no shame in having women in the house." M—— came an hour later and cleared the room, but as soon as he went away it filled again, and with men as well as women, and others unscrupulously tore out the paper panes from the windows. This afternoon I stayed in bed feeling rather ill, and about three o'clock a number of women in blue sheets, with a very definite leader, came in, arranged the karsi, filling the room with smoke, as a preliminary, gathered themselves under the quilt, and sat there talking loudly to each other. I felt myself the object of a focused stare, and covered my head with a blanket in despair. Then more women came in with tea-trays, and they all took tea and sat for another hour or two talking and tittering, Hadji assuring me that they were doing it out of kindness, because I was not well, and they thought it dull for me alone! The room was again cleared, and I got up at dark, and hearing a great deal of whispering and giggling, saw that they had opened the door windows, and that a crowd was outside. When I woke this morning a man was examining my clothes, which were hanging up. They feel and pull my hair, finger all my things, and have broken all the fine teeth out of my comb. They have the curiosity without the gracefulness of the Japanese.

This is a house of the better sort, though the walls are not plastered. A carpet loom is fixed into the floor with a half-woven carpet upon it. Some handsome rugs are laid down. There are two much-decorated marriage chests, some guns and swords, a quantity of glass teacups and ornaments in the recesses, and coloured woodcuts of the Russian Imperial family, here, as in almost every house, are on the walls.

There is great rejoicing to-night "for joy that a man is born into the world," the first-born of the ketchuda's eldest son. In their extreme felicity they took me to see the mother and babe. The room was very hot, and crowded with relations and friends. The young mother was sitting up on her bed on the floor and the infant lay beside her dressed in swaddling clothes. She looked very happy and the young father very proud. I added a small offering to the many which were brought in for luck, and it was not rejected.

A sword was brought from my room, and with it the mamaché traced a line upon the four walls, repeating a formula which I understood to be, "I am making this tower for Miriam and her child."[20] I was warned by Hadji not to look on the child or to admire him without saying "Mashallah," lest I should bring on him the woe of the evil eye. So greatly is it feared, that precautions are invariably taken against it from the hour of birth, by bestowing amulets and charms upon the child. A paragraph of the Koran, placed in a silk bag, had already been tied round the infant's neck. Later, he will wear another bag round his arm, and turquoise or blue beads will be sewn upon his cap.

If a visitor admires a child without uttering the word Mashallah, and the child afterwards falls sick, the visitor at once is regarded as answerable for the calamity, and the relations take a shred of his garment, and burn it in a brazier with cress seed, walking round and round the child as it burns.

Persian mothers are regarded as convalescent on the third day, when they go to the hammam to perform the ceremonies required by Moslem law. A boy is weaned at the end of twenty-six months and a girl at the end of twenty-four. If possible, on the weaning day the child is carried to the mosque, and certain devotions are performed. The weaning feast is an important function, and the relations and friends assemble, bringing presents, and the child in spite of his reluctance is forced to partake of the food.

At the earliest possible period the mamaché pronounces in the infant's ear the Shiah profession of faith: "God is God, there is but one God, and Mohammed is the Prophet of God, and Ali is the Lieutenant of God." A child becomes a Moslem as soon as this Kelemah Islam has been spoken into his ear; but a ceremony attends the bestowal of his name, which resembles that in use among the Buddhists of Tibet on similar occasions.

Unless the father be very poor indeed, he makes a feast for his friends on an auspicious day, and invites the village mollahs. Sweetmeats are solemnly eaten after the guests have assembled. Then the infant, stiffened and mummied in its swaddling clothes, is brought in, and is laid on the floor by one of the mollahs. Five names are written on five slips of paper, which are placed between the leaves of the Koran, or under the edge of the carpet. The first chapter of the Koran is then read. One of the slips is then drawn at random, and a mollah takes up the child, and pronounces in its ear the name found upon it, after which he places the paper on its clothes.

The relations and friends give it presents according to their means, answering to our christening gifts, and thereafter it is called by the name it has received. Among men's names there is a preponderance of those taken from the Old Testament, among which Ibrahim, Ismail, Suleiman, Yusuf, and Moussa are prominent. Abdullah, Mahmoud, Hassan, Raouf, Baba Houssein, Imam are also common, and many names have the suffix of Ali among the Shiahs. Fatmeh is a woman's name, but girl-children usually receive the name of some flower or bird, or fascinating quality of disposition or person.

The journey is beginning to tell on men and animals. One of the Arab horses has had a violent attack of pain from the cold, and several of the men are ailing and depressed.

Dizabad, Feb. 11.—Nanej is the last village laid down on any map on the route we are taking for over a hundred miles, i.e. until we reach Kûm, though it is a caravan route, and it does not appear that any Europeans have published any account of it. Just now it is a buried country, for the snow is lying from one to four feet deep. It is not even possible to pronounce any verdict on the roads, for they are simply deep ruts in the snow, with "mule ladders." The people say that the plains are irrigated and productive, and that the hills pasture their sheep and cattle; and they all complain of the exactions of local officials. There is no variety in costume, and very little in dwellings, except as to size, for they are all built of mud or sun-dried bricks, within cattle yards, and have subterranean pens for cattle and goats. The people abound in diseases, specially of the eyes and bones.

The salient features of the hills, if they have any, are rounded off by snow, and though many of them rise to a great height, none are really impressive but Mount Elwand, close to Hamadan. The route is altogether hilly, but the track pursues valleys and low passes as much as possible, and is never really steep.

Yesterday we marched twenty-four miles in eight hours without any incident, and the "heavy division" took thirteen hours, and did not come in till ten at night! There are round hills, agglomerated into ranges, with easy passes, the highest 7026 feet in altitude, higher summits here and there in view, the hills encircling level plains, sprinkled sparsely with villages at a distance from the road, denoted by scrubby poplars and willows; sometimes there is a kanaat or underground irrigation channel with a line of pits or shafts, but whatever there was, or was not, it was always lonely, grim, and desolate. The strong winds have blown some of the hillsides bare, and they appear in all their deformity of shapeless mounds of black gravel, or black mud, with relics of last year's thistles and euphorbias upon them. So great is the destitution of fuel that even now people are out cutting the stalks of thistles which appear above the snow.

As the hours went by, I did rather wish for the smashed kajawehs, especially when we met the ladies of a governor's haram, to the number of thirty, reclining snugly in pairs, among blankets and cushions, in panniers with tilts, and curtains of a thick material, dyed Turkey red. The cold became very severe towards evening.

The geographical interest of the day was that we crossed the watershed of the region, and have left behind the streams which eventually reach the sea, all future rivers, however great their volume, or impetuous their flow, disappearing at last in what the Americans call "sinks," but which are known in Persia as kavirs, usually salt swamps. Near sunset we crossed a bridge of seven pointed arches with abutments against a rapid stream, and passing a great gaunt caravanserai on an eminence, and a valley to the east of the bridge with a few villages giving an impression of fertility, hemmed in by some shapely mountains, we embarked on a level plain, bounded on all sides by hills so snowy that not a brown patch or outbreak of rock spotted their whiteness, and with villages and caravanserais scattered thinly over it. On the left, there are the extensive ruins of old Dizabad, and a great tract of forlorn graves clustering round a crumbling imamzada.