g
things that have been indiscreetly published by travellers in books at
home, have sometimes found their way back to the far East, and caused
embarrassment and chagrin to people who treated them with hospitality and
respect.

CHAPTER IV.

THROUGH KHORASSAN.

Shahrood is at the exit from the mountains of the caravan route from
Asterabad, Mazanderan, and the Caspian coast. The mountains overlooking
it are bare and rocky. A good trade seems to be done by several firms of
Russian-Armenians in exporting wool, cotton, and pelts to Russia, and
handling Russian iron and petroleum. But for the iniquitous method of
taxation, which consists really of looting the producing classes of all
they can stand, the volume of trade here might easily be tenfold what it
is.

Shahrood is, or rather was, one of the "four stations of terror,"
Mijamid, Miandasht, and Abassabad being the other three, so called on
account of their exposed position and the consequent frequency of
Turcoman attacks. Even nowadays they have their little ripples of
excitement; rumors of Turcoman raids are heard in the bazaars, and news
was brought in and telegraphed to Teheran a week ago that fifteen
thousand sheep had been carried off from a district north of the
mountains. Word comes back that a regiment of soldiers is on its way to
chastise the Turcomans and recover the property; what really will happen,
will be a horde of soldiers staying there long enough to devour what few
sheep the poor people have left, and then returning without having seen,
much less chastised, a Turcoman. The Persian Government will notify the
Russian Minister of the misdoings of the Turcomans, and ask to have them
punished and the sheep restored; the Russian Minister will reply that
these particular Turcomans were Persian subjects, and nothing further
will be done.

Mr. Mclntyre is a canny Scot, a Royal Engineer, and weighs fully three
hundred pounds; but with this avoirdupois he is far from being inactive,
and together we ramble up the Asterabad Pass to take a look at the Bostam
Valley on the other side. The valley isn't much to look at; no verdure,
only a brown, barren plain, surrounded on all sides by equally brown,
barren mountains. In the evening the Prince sends round a pheasant, and
shortly after calls himself and partakes of tea and cigarettes,

I accept Mr. McIntyre's invitation to remain and rest up, but only for
another day, my experience being that, when on the roa