himself was the safest guide. In a minute or two the animal moved, and
step by step clambered carefully up the rock-strewn mountain-side.

At last they came out on the mountain top, but only to find that they
were on the edge of a flat high plain--a tableland. The air was pure
and fresher; the mules and the travellers revived. Martyn's pony began
to trot briskly along. So, as dawn came up, they came in sight of a
great courtyard built by the king of that country to refresh pilgrims.

Through night after night they tramped, across plateau and mountain
range, till they climbed the third range, and then plunged by a
winding rocky path into a wide valley where, at a great town called
Kazrun, in a garden of cypress trees was a summer-house.

Martyn lay down on the floor but could not sleep, though he was
horribly weary. "There seemed," he said, "to be fire within my head,
my skin like a cinder." His heart beat like a hammer.

They went on climbing another range of mountains, first tormented
by mosquitoes, then frozen with cold; Martyn was so overwhelmed with
sleep that he could not sit on his pony and had to hurry ahead to keep
awake and then sit down with his back against a rock where he fell
asleep in a second, and had to be shaken to wake up when Zechariah,
the Armenian mule driver, came up to where he was.

They had at last climbed the four mountain rungs of the ladder to
Persia, and came out on June 11th, 1811, on the great plain where the
city of Shiraz stands. Here he found the host Jaffir Ali Khan, to whom
he carried his letters of introduction. Martyn in his Persian dress,
seated on the ground, was feasted with curries and rice, sweets cooled
with snow and perfumed with rose water, and coffee.

Ali Khan had a lovely garden of orange trees, and in the garden Martyn
sat. Ill as he was, he worked day in and day out to translate the life
of Jesus Christ in the New Testament from the Greek language into
pure and simple Persian. The kind host put up a tent for Martyn in the
garden, close to some beautiful vines, from which hung lovely bunches
of purple grapes. By the side of his tent ran a clear stream
of running water. All the evening nightingales sang sweetly and
mournfully.

As he sat there at his work, men came hundreds of miles to talk with
this holy man, as they felt him to be. Moslems--they yet travelled
even from Baghdad and Bosra and Isfahan to hear this "infidel" speak
of Jesus Christ, and to argue as to