ng twenty miles being the toughest kind
of a trundle through mud, snow-fields, and drifts. This is a most
uninviting piece of country to wheel through, and it would seem but
little less so to traverse at this time of the year with a caravan of
camels, two or three of these animals being found exhausted by the
roadside, and a couple of charvadars encountered in one place skinning
another, while its companion is lying helplessly alongside watching the
operation and waiting its own turn to the same treatment. It is said to
be characteristic of a camel that, when he once slips down, cold and
weary, in the mud, he never again tries to regain his feet. The weather
looks squally and unsettled, and I push ahead as rapidly as the condition
of the ground will permit, fearing a snow-storm in the hills.

About three p.m. I arrive at the caravansarai of Ahwan, a dreary,
inhospitable place in an equally dreary, inhospitable country. Situated
in a region of wind and snow and bleak, open hills, the wretched serai of
Ahwan is remembered as a place where the keen, raw wind seems to come
whistling gleefully and yet maliciously from all points of the compass,
seemingly centring in the caravansarai itself; these winds render any
attempt to kindle a fire a dismal failure, resulting in smoke and watery
eyes. Here I manage to obtain half-frozen bread and a few eggs; after an
ineffectual attempt to roast the latter and thaw out the former, I am
forced to eat them both as they are; and although the sun looks ominously
low, and it is six farsakhs to the next place, I conclude to chance
anything rather than risk being snow-bound at Ahwan. Fortunately, after
about five miles more of snow, the trail emerges upon a gravelly plain
with a gradual descent from the hills just crossed to the lower level of
the Damghan plain. The favorable gradient and the smooth trails induce a
smart pace, and as the waning daylight merges into the soft, chastened
light of a cloud-veiled moon, I alight at the village and serai of
Gusheh.

There are at the caravansarai a number of travellers, among them a moujik
of the Don, travelling to Teheran and beyond in company with a Tabreez
Turk. The Russian peasant at once invites me to his menzil in the
caravansarai; and although he looks, if anything, a trifle more
indifferent about personal cleanliness than either a Turkish or Persian
peasant, I have no alternative but to accept his well-meant invitation.
At this juncture, whe