south.  Situated where it can derive the most benefit from these streams is the village of Sherifabad, and beyond Sherifabad stretches a verdureless waste to Aivan-i-Kaif.  On this desert, I sit down, for a few minutes, on one of those little mounds of stones piled up at intervals to mark the road when the trail is buried beneath the winter snows; a green-turbaned descendant of the Prophet, bestriding a bay horse, comes from the opposite direction, stops, dismounts, squats down on his hams close by, and proceeds to regale himself with bread and figs, meanwhile casting fugitive glances at the bicycle.  Presently he advances closer, gives me a handful of figs, squats down closer to the bicycle, and commences a searching investigation of its several parts.

“Where are you going?” he finally asks.  “Meshed.”  “Where have you come from?” “Teheran.”  With that he hands me another handful of figs, remounts his horse, and rides away without another word.  Inquisitiveness is seen almost bristling from the loose sleeves and flowing folds of his sky-blue gown, but his over-whelming sense of his own holiness forbids him holding anything like a lengthy intercourse with an unhallowed Ferenghi, and, much as he would like to know everything about the bicycle, he goes away without asking a single question about it.

Shortly after parting company with the sanctimonious seyud, I encounter a prosperous-looking party of dervishes.  Some of them are mounted on excellent donkeys, and for dervishes they look exceptionally flourishing and well to do.  As I ride slowly past, they accost me with their customary “huk yah huk,” and promise to pray Allah for a safe journey to wherever I am going, if I will only favor them with the necessary backsheesh to command their good offices.

There are some stretches of very good road across this desert, and I reach Aivan-i-Kaif near noon.  There has been no drinkable water for a long distance, and, being thirsty, my first inquiry is for tea.  “There is a tchai-khan at the umbar (water-cistern), yonder,” I am told, and straightway proceed to the place pointed out; but “tchai-khan neis” is the reply upon inquiring at the umbar.  In this manner am I promptly initiated into one peculiarity of the people along this portion of the Meshed pilgrim road, a peculiarity that distinguishes them from the ordinary Persian as fully as the shaking of their heads for an affirmative reply does the people of the Maritza Valley from other people of the Balkan Peninsula.  They will frequently ask you if you want a certain article, simply for the purpose of telling you they haven’t got it.  Whether this queer inconsistency comes of simon-pure inquisitiveness, to hear what one will say in reply, or whether they derive a certain amount of inquisitorial pleasure from raising a person’s expectations one moment so as to witness his disappointment the next, is a question I prefer to leave to others, but more than once am I brought into contact with this peculiarity during the few brief hours I stay at Aivan-i-Kaif.  It is not improbable that these people are merely carrying their ideas of politeness to the insane length of holding out the promise of what they think or ascertain one wants, knowing at the same time their inability to supply it.