Kashan.
After all, there was a delight in abandoning the comparatively Sybaritic luxury Teheran, and riding once more through the wilderness, sleeping on floors and making a pillow of a pair of top boots and Shakespeare. True, we started off with a plump, weighty, and gener by one of our at ere the setting of the second day remaining. alacrity, to ringing the ges On eggs, kabaab, chickens—chickens of the toughest, Kabaab of the stringiest, and eggs more fit for electioneering purposes than eating. mounds, but we saw nothing of the " wild Our way lay over humpy, barren
warriors of the turquoise hills" that some picturesque-minded poot has written so exquisitely about at home. We got, however, © magnificent view of high-coned Demavend, that climbs into the heavens ehacen we listened to all sorts of luite twenty thousand feet or more. At marvellous yarns about this marvellous mountain. We drew the line at believing that on its summit dwelt Zohak, the most wicked of kings, surrounded by a court of magicians, sorcerers, and other evil birds. All we would believe was that "once upon time," when Menu-cheker made peace with Afrasiab, one of the many kings who have been lords of the entire earth, the it of Persis was defined by an arrow shot from Demavend. Those were days when drawing of the Long bow was of good account, and the story that the arrow sent: on its flight at sunrise did not descend till noon, when it fell by the waters of the golden Oxus, five or six hundred miles away, is as believable as many another story.
There used to be three routes from the capital to the sacred city of Kum. But when one of the routes was patched up and and tolerably levelled, so that even carriages might roll along it, the Persian caravans, to the disgust of the authorities, would persist in trading over the low-lying, swampy land that they had traversed these four thousand years. An ingenious official, however, had a channel cut into the rocks, and the swamp was converted into a lake, the lake of the Hour-i-Sultan Kavir. spoilt the old caravan road, and made the camels and their drivers go the way they should go. We cycled the new track.
But no wonder folks shun it, and fervently assert it runs through a region where only ginns, and gnomes, and headless devils, and all kinds of monstrous foul and pestilential spirits dwell. There is a valley called the Malek-el-Mant Dareh—the Valley of the Angel of Death—a bleak, heaven-curst place. Nota blade of grass can grow; there nothing but desolation and drought. We hastened fearfully, seeing bleached bones by the wayside, disturbing the heavy-winged vultures in their gorging feast on the carcases of fresh victims.
Then we had to spin across a corner of Persia's great salt desert, stretching for hundreds of miles to unknown Khorasan. In parts the earth glistened as with snow. It was salt. All the streams were salt, and even the dried-up rivulets were marked by a band of salt. Of course, the sea once rolled here, when its waters joined those of the Casper and the on ian mero ACTOBS the sandy steppes of Russia and mingled with the Black Sea, But the Persians know nothing of changes on the earth's surface. They accept the statement that there was once a sea here, but say that it dried up at the birth of the Prophet, and that the present swamps are the sweat from the brow of Shamr, who murdered the saintly Hussein So excellent wae the road that we easily travelled at the rate of fifty miles a day. And we were by no means lonely, for there were plenty of caravans, laden with carpets, coming up from the south. We met a cavalcade of horsemen, and in the centro rode an imposing, black-bearded man on a magnificent charger with trappings of gold. He saluted us courteously, and we wondered who he was. Afterwards we learned he was Spandier Khan, the chief of the Bakhteries, a nomad' tribe acknowledging neither Shah nor law; the terror of all caravans, which they plunder mercilessly. Now jand then the villages were further apart than we reckoned, and, faint with hunger, we were obliged to beg broad from any stray wayfarer we encountered.
Far in the distance we, one afternoon, saw a light, like the flash of a golden mirror. It was the gleam of the dome of the great mosque at Kum, We had been warned to be careful in Kum, which is a holy city, notorious for its fanaticism, and where the seeds, alleged descendants of the Prophet, encourage the populace to spit on and' beat, outrage and murder Christians. We had arranged to stay of the house of the only Christian in the town, an Armenian, and, beguiling a youth with a present of & couple of krans, we hurried over the narrow bridge that spans the little river, admiring with cursory glance the evening roseate hue that flushed the minarets and warmed into beauty the lofty mud-bound city'walls, and then dived into the darksome, noisy bazaars, running the gauntlet of a thousand curious eyes, and unheeding the shouts—" Franki! Frunki! pete snys" ("Christians Christians sons of dogs"). The bazaars were full, but we dodged in and out so rapidly that the crowd had no chance of following. Yot we were not quite easy in our minds till within the walls of the Armenian house we heard the bolts drawn, and we knew we were safe.
Next morning, as something required being done to one of the bicycles, we sent for a blacksmith. One of us desired to accompany him to see that the repairs were executed properly. "Oh, no," he replied, "you mustn't do that. Ifa Franki came to my workshop there would at once be a gathering of people, and not only should I be unable to work, but I should have to shut the shop for fear of a riot."
Anxious to see so famous a city as holy Kum, we went. abroad with our Armenian friend, who sent a stalwart servant- in front to clear the way, while another followed behind to cuff any one who offered an insult. The moment we got into the bazaars a ery was raised against' us. 'That was a chance for our rear-guard, who, though 'Mahommedan, seemed' rather Pregl, of the, scompation of defending christians, and he at once ran up to the offender and commenced to batter him about the head.
Keeping well together, and the three of us agreeing that whatever might be the indignity we would not retaliate, we at last reached the -neighbourhood of the great mosque. The ground was covered with thousands of tomb-stones.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.