from which fly myriads of sparks, looking very pretty as it describes rapid circles.  This is a. little wire cage, full of live charcoal, that is being swung round and round like a sling to enliven the coals for priming the kalian.  In the middle space, crowded with animals and their loads, the horses, being all stallions, are constantly squealing and fighting; camels, are grunting dolefully, donkeys are braying and bells clanging, and grooms and charvadars are shouting and quarrelling.  Taken all in all, the interior of a crowded caravanserai is a decidedly animated place.

The snow-storm subsides during the night, and a clear, frosty morning breaks upon a wintry landscape, in which nothing is visible but snow.  The hadji announces his intention of “Inshallah Meshed, am roos” (please God, we will reach Meshed to-day) as he covers up the obtrusive tail of a fish emerging from one of the saddle-bags and prepares to mount.  I give him my packages to carry, by way of lightening my burden as much as possible for the struggle through the snow, and promise him a bottle of arrack, upon reaching Meshed, as a reward for thus assisting me through.  Arrack is forbidden fruit to a hadji above all things else, so that nothing I could promise him would likely prove more tempting or acceptable, or be better appreciated!

It proves slavish work trundling, tugging, and carrying the bicycle through the deep snow along a half-broken trail made by a few horses, and through deep drifts; but the cold, bracing air is favorable for exertion, and by ten o’clock we reach Shahriffabad, where a halt is made to prepare a cup of tea and to give the hadji’s horse a feed of barley.  At Shahriffabad we are warned that on the hills between here and Meshed snow will be found two feet deep, streams belly deep to the hadji’s horse will have to be forded, and, toward Meshed, mud knee-deep.  Conscious that the mud will be “knee-deep” the whole distance, after the disappearance of the snow, this makes us only the more eager to push on while we may.

The sun has by this time become uncomfortably warm, and the narrow trail is fast becoming a miry pathway of mud and slush under the trampling feet of the animals gone ahead, and of villagers’ donkeys returning from the city.  Mile after mile is devoted to the unhappy task of trundling the bicycle ahead, rear wheel aloft, through mud and slush varying from ankle-deep to worse, occasionally varying the programme by fording a stream.

Late in the afternoon we arrive at the summit of the hills overlooking the Meshed Plain, and the hadji points out enthusiastically the golden dome of Imam Biza’s sanctuary; the yellow, glistening goal whose famed sanctity has attracted hosts of pilgrims from all quarters of Central Asia for ages past.  The hills hereabout are of a rocky character, and pious pilgrims have gathered into little mounds every loose piece of rock, it being customary for each pilgrim to find a stone and add it to one of these piles upon first viewing the bright golden dome of the holy city from this commanding spot.