Ispahan.
Privation and peril are capital things when confined to imaginative adventure. But in real life they can be more honoured. in the breach than the observance. And our experiences during the last week, though interesting enough to look back upon and talk over by the fireside, were precious uncomfortable during the happening. For we have climbed over hills twice as high as Snowdon, cycled through blizzard of sleet, been enveloped in a snowstorm and almost lost, have faced the prospect of an ignominious, shivering death, we gone to bed hungry and risen famished, and altogether had about as lively and exciting a time as anyone could desire.
The day we started from Kashan the weather was delightful. One might have almost sung from joyfulness of heart had there not ing " scorpion whose venomous bite kills. he, a damper in the shape of a tiresome Indeed, one form of showing hate in Persia uphill ride, first through a wilderness of is to wish that your enemy might be stung by a Kashan scorpion or be made Governor stones and then through patches of shiny of Guan, though what be the particular ooze. There were dozens of streams skipping along, but instead of letting them hardships of being a Governor we don't 5} kip over their naturally rocky beds the know. However, if all one hears be true, ingenious Persians had diverted them to the scorpions of Kashan were at one time run about the roadway, and return to the pretty bad, for folks had to sleep in ham-channel brown and muddy. This was not mocks to avoid them. perverseness, but. because the Persians We had come direct from Kum to Kas-theories that clear water readily evaporated, ner surpassed only by the enmity existing han, towns pages =e other in 6 man-and muddy water does not. According'y between Liverpool and Manchester. And they make it as muddy as they can.
We went straight towards the mormntains while each place considers itself infinitely the superior of the other, the rest of Persia in the direction of a great cleft in Uae rock, caused, the local people say, by the hoof of rather sneers at both, and has actually coin-the Prophet All's horse. That Fiorse must oda proverb that ''a dog of Kashan is bet-have been a vigorous kicker. "We saw the ter-than a noble of Kum; albeit a dog is better than a man of Kashan." We were squalid village of Gebrabad, inhabited by too short a time in either city to draw fire-worshippers. There wo's no fire-wor-comparisons. All we did mark was that shipping going on while.we were there, whereas Kum is famous for saintliness, except the crouching over the little pans of Kashaa is renowned for silk. Hardly had smouldering charcoal, six men trying to get we got off our bicycles before a gang of warm with a half-penny worth oh wend. At Gebrabad we struck into the Kurud dealers were upon, us spreading over tables, floor, and chairs, piles of articles Pass. We went alov'g tenderly, for where for which we had no earthly, hea there was not a boulder ready to upset ly, or other use.
We were an unappreciative there was a torreyst prepared to drench. The way was lived with snow. At one trio. point the path was so steep and icy that Later in the afternoon we pail a visit to struggling over the rocks was like walking some of the native silk looms. They were greasy pole, In the hollow of the hills of slow-worl, last-century pattern, and we found a. great blue lake, the Band-ithe thin-limbed, rice-fed men, sitting up Kurud, look ing exceeding fine, lying as it on their perches, throwing the shuttle to were in the palm of the snowy mountains. and fro, were not brilliant specimens of the "Towards, sundown a will-o'-the-wisp Persian working man. Every three of four kind of village, that sauntered up the minutes there wasa halt to light a cigarette. rocks, arid ultimately got lost in the dusky The cigarette suggested tea, and then a winter even-tide, came in sight. A squall handful of dull charcoal embers had to be ling, noisy stream occupied most of the puffed into life and a samovar got ready. roadway. One did not know which was A dozen, tossings of the shuttle would the stream and which the road, but we ensue, followed, however, by the inevitable saved worry by deciding they were both cigarette. And so on da cape and da cape. the same. Still the stream was rather
ed in the weaving of silk was certainly Ereybody in Kashan who was not engagpapencegas 5 instead ed making room for climb to the: top of 'a wall and, figurahamlet mosque it obliged the mosque employed hammering might and main at the manufacture of copper pot sand pans. There tively, let the water slide between its seemed to be miles of bazaars devoted to legs. We captured a small boy and asked coppersmiths, and hundreds and thousands him to show -us where tea could be of coppersmiths. The clatter they made twas deafening, like the roar in the boiler. got. a sepicd in a jargon of which we could @ neither nor tail—it shop of one of our great engineering works was not Persian, or Greek, or Gaelic—and at home. The abiding marvel is where all then it began to dawn upon what we call those pots and pans went to. our minds this must be Javinan. It was.
In one of the high-roofed marts, abutting The Javinaneso have an original, str copyright language of their own. A on the main line of was the post office. The post had just arrived on mules Rreither can understand the other. So farther up the Legion ae the 'A|from Ispahan, and letters, ple we a language of their own. es, and what not, were pitched hi iggledy on when conversing they speak Persian, No the ground. We had letters to send to one knows where the languages came from, Europe." When would they go weaskand, indeed, few folk care. Certainly we ed. "Oh, to-morrow, the next day, or next were not particularly inquisitive, but we week, or whenever bags can be made up." noticed that when a lion and a Javinwas the reply. We turned on our heels, murmuring something. Truly Persia is an something like the struggle of a ghina something like the struggle of a His easy-going, dilatory land.
Scot and a newly-imported Italian musico
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.