earing huge
sheepskin busbies, similar to the head-gear of the Roumanians and Tabreez
Turks of Ovahjik and the Perso-Turkish border. Most of these busbies are
black or brown, but some affect a mixture of black and white, a piebald
affair that looks very striking and peculiar.

The telegraph-jee here turns out to be a person of immense importance in
his own estimation, and he has evidently succeeded in impressing the same
belief upon the unsophisticated minds of the villagers, who, apparently,
have come to regard him as little less than "monarch of all he surveys."
True, there isn't much to survey at Miaudasht, everything there being
within the caravanserai walls; but whenever the telegraph-jee emerges
from the seclusion of his little office, it is to blossom forth upon the
theatre of the crowd's admiring glances in the fanciful habiliments of a
la-de-da Persian swell. Very punctilious as regards etiquette, instead of
coming forth in a spontaneous manner to see who I am and look at the
bicycle, he pays me a ceremonious visit at the chapar-khana half an hour
later. In this visit he is preceded by his farrash, and he walks with a
magnificent peacock strut that causes the skirts of his faultless
roundabout to flop up and down, up and down, in rhythmic accompaniment to
his steps. Apart from his insufferable conceit, however, he tries to make
himself as agreeable as possible, and after tea and cigarettes, I give
him and the people a tomasha, at the conclusion of which he asks
permission to send in my supper.

The room in which I spend the evening is a small, dome-roofed apartment,
in which a circular opening in the apex of the dome is expected to fill
the triple office of admitting light, ventilation, and carrying off smoke
from the fire; the natural consequence being that the room is dark,
unventilated, and full of smoke. Now and then some determined sightseer
on the roof fills this hole up completely with his head, in an effort to
peer down through the smoke and obtain a glimpse of myself or the
bicycle, or a mischievous youngster, unable to resist the temptation,
drops down a stone.

The shagird-chapar here is a man who has been to Askabad and seen the
railroad; and when the inevitable question of Russian versus English
marifet (mechanical skill) comes up, he endeavors to impress upon the
open-mouthed listeners the marvellous character of the locomotive. "It is
a wonderful atesh-gharri" (fire-wagon), he would say, "and r