ng violently; some are shouting
lustily at each other across the whole width of the serai; all are taking
turns at smoking the kalian or sipping tea, or preparing supper.
Occasionally a fiery wheel glows through the darkness, from which fly
myriads of sparks, looking very pretty as it describes rapid circles.
This is a. little wire cage, full of live charcoal, that is being swung
round and round like a sling to enliven the coals for priming the kalian.
In the middle space, crowded with animals and their loads, the horses,
being all stallions, are constantly squealing and fighting; camels, are
grunting dolefully, donkeys are braying and bells clanging, and grooms
and charvadars are shouting and quarrelling. Taken all in all, the
interior of a crowded caravanserai is a decidedly animated place.

The snow-storm subsides during the night, and a clear, frosty morning
breaks upon a wintry landscape, in which nothing is visible but snow. The
hadji announces his intention of "Inshallah Meshed, am roos" (please God,
we will reach Meshed to-day) as he covers up the obtrusive tail of a fish
emerging from one of the saddle-bags and prepares to mount. I give him my
packages to carry, by way of lightening my burden as much as possible for
the struggle through the snow, and promise him a bottle of arrack, upon
reaching Meshed, as a reward for thus assisting me through. Arrack is
forbidden fruit to a hadji above all things else, so that nothing I could
promise him would likely prove more tempting or acceptable, or be better
appreciated!

It proves slavish work trundling, tugging, and carrying the bicycle
through the deep snow along a half-broken trail made by a few horses, and
through deep drifts; but the cold, bracing air is favorable for exertion,
and by ten o'clock we reach Shahriffabad, where a halt is made to prepare
a cup of tea and to give the hadji's horse a feed of barley. At
Shahriffabad we are warned that on the hills between here and Meshed snow
will be found two feet deep, streams belly deep to the hadji's horse will
have to be forded, and, toward Meshed, mud knee-deep. Conscious that the
mud will be "knee-deep" the whole distance, after the disappearance of
the snow, this makes us only the more eager to push on while we may.

The sun has by this time become uncomfortably warm, and the narrow trail
is fast becoming a miry pathway of mud and slush under the trampling feet
of the animals gone ahead, and of villagers' donkey