uns on an
awhan rah (iron road); the charvadar puts in atesh and ob. It goes chu,
chu! chu!! ch-ch-ch-chu-ch-u-u-u!!! spits fire and smoke, pulls a
long-khylie long-caravan of forgans with it, and goes ten farsakhs an
hour." But in order to thoroughly appreciate this travelled and highly
enlightened person's narrative, one must have been present in the
smoke-permeated room, and by the nickering light of a camel-thorn fire
have watched the gesticulations of the speaker and the rapt attention of
the listeners; must have heard the exclamations of "Mashal-l-a-h!" escape
honestly and involuntarily from the parted lips of wonder-stricken
auditors as they endeavored to comprehend how such things could possibly
be. And yet there is no doubt that, five minutes afterward, the verdict
of each listener, to himself, was that the shagird-chapar, in describing
to them the locomotive, was lying like a pirate--or a Persian--and, after
all, they couldn't conceive of anything more wonderful than the bicycle
and the ability to ride it, and this they had seen with their own eyes.

It is the change of the moon, and a most wild-looking evening; the sun
sets with a fiery forge glowing about it, and fringing with an angry
border the banks of darksome clouds that mingle their weird shapes with
the mountain masses to the west, the wind sighs and moans through the
archways and menzils of the huge caravanserai, breathing of rain and
unsettled weather. These warning signals are not far in advance, for a
drenching rain soaks and saturates everything during the night,
converting the parallel trails of the pilgrim road into twenty narrow,
silvery streaks, that glisten like trails of glass ahead, as I wheel
along them to meet the newly-risen sun. It is a morning of hurrying,
scudding clouds and fitful sunshine, but fresh and bracing after the
rain; a country of broken hills and undulating road is reached in an
hour; the broken hills are covered with blossoming shrubs and green young
camel-thorn, in which birds are cheerily piping.

Six farsakhs bring me to Abbasabad, the last of the four stations of
terror. A lank villager is on the lookout a couple of miles west of the
place, the people having been apprised of my coming by some travellers
who left Miandasht yesterday evening. Tucking the legs of his pantaloons
in his waistband, leaving his legs bare and unencumbered, he follows me
at a swinging trot into the village, and pilots me to the caravanserai.