offender; the crowd howls with renewed delight at this, and several hilarious hobble-de-hoys endeavor to shove one of their companions in the place vacated by the belabored ryot, in the hope that he likewise will come in for the visitation of the soldiers’ o’er- willing staves.  The broad suburban road, where the people have been fondly expecting to see the bicycle light out in earnest for Teheran at a marvellous rate of speed, is found to be nothing less than a bed of loose sand and stones, churned up by the narrow hoofs of multitudinous donkeys.  Quite a number of better class Persians accompany me some distance further on horseback; when taking their departure, a gentleman on a splendid Arab charger, shakes hands and says:  “Good-by, my dear,” which apparently is all the English he knows.  He has evidently kept his eyes and ears open when happening about the English consulate, and the happy thought striking him at the moment, he repeats, parrot-like, this term of endearment, all unsuspicious of the ridiculousness of its application in the present case.

For several miles the road winds tortuously over a range of low, stony hills, the surface being generally loose and unridable.  The water-supply of Tabreez is conducted from these hills by an ancient system of kanaats or underground water-ditches; occasionally one comes to a sloping cavern leading down to the water; on descending to the depth of from twenty to forty feet, a small, rapidly-coursing stream of delicious cold water is found, well rewarding the thirsty traveller for his trouble; sometimes these cavernous openings are simply sloping, bricked archways, provided with steps.  The course of these subterranean water-ways can always be traced their entire length by uniform mounds of earth, piled up at short intervals on the surface; each mound represents the excavations from a perpendicular shaft, at the bottom of which the crystal water can be seen coursing along toward the city; they are merely man-holes for the purpose of readily cleaning out the channel of the kanaat.  The water is conducted underground, chiefly to avoid the waste by evaporation and absorption in surface ditches.  These kanaats are very extensive affairs in many places; the long rows of surface mounds are visible, stretching for mile after mile across the plain as far as eye can penetrate, or until losing themselves among the foot-hills of some distant mountain chain; they were excavated in the palmy days of the Persian Empire to bring pure mountain streams to the city fountains and to irrigate the thirsty plain; it is in the interest of self-preservation that the Persians now keep them from falling into decay.  At noon, while seated on a grassy knoll discussing the before-mentioned contents of my pockets, I am favored with a free exhibition of what a physical misunderstanding is like among the Persian ryots.  Two companies of katir-jees happen to get into an altercation about something, and from words it gradually develops into