nd
kalian-smoking, meanwhile eagerly and expectantly watching the
preparations for making tea. Preferring to leave them in full possession
rather than be in their uncongenial midst, I pass the time in promenading
back and forth behind the horses. After walking to and fro a few times,
the, to them, singular performance of walking back and forth excites
their easily-aroused curiosity, and the wondering attention of all
present becomes once again my unhappy portion. An Asiatic's idea of
enjoying himself in cold weather is squatting about a few coals of fire,
making no physical exertion whatever beyond smoking and conversing; and
the spectacle of a Ferenghi promenading back and forth, when he might be
following their example of squatting by the fire, is to them a subject of
no little wonder and speculation.

The redeeming feature of my enforced sojourn at Lasgird is the excellence
of the pomegranates, for which the place is famous, and of which there
seems an abundance left over through the winter. A small quantity of
seedless pomegranates, a highly valued variety, are grown here at
Lasgird, but they are all sent to Teheran for the use of the Shah and his
household, and are not to be obtained by anyone. It has been a raw,
disagreeable day, and at night I decide to sleep in the stable, where it
is at least warmer, though the remove is but a compromise by which one's
olfactory sensibilities are sacrificed in the interest of securing a few
hours' sleep.

An unexpected, but none the less welcome, deliverance appears on the
following morning in the shape of a frost, that forms on the sticky mud a
crust of sufficient thickness to enable me to escape across to the
welcome gravel beyond the Lasgird Plain ere it thaws out. Thus on the
precarious path of a belated morning frost, breaking through here,
jumping over there, I leave Lasgird and its memories of wedding
processions, and blood-letting, its huge mud fortress, its pomegranates,
and its discomforts.

Three miles of mostly ridable gravel bring me to another village, and to
four miles of horrible mud in getting through its fields and over its
ditches. A raw wind is blowing, and squally gusts of snow come scudding
across the dreary prospect--a prospect flanked on the north by cold, gray
hills, and the face of nature generally furrowed with tell-tale lines of
winter's partial dissolution. While trundling through this village, both
myself and bicycle plastered to a well-nigh unr