ratulating myself on taking this precaution, for the horse stumbles,
and, being too far gone to recover himself, comes down on his nose, and
the "hadji and Mazanderau dervish" is cutting a most ridiculous figure in
the mud. His tall lambskin hat flies off and lands in a pool of muddy
water some distance ahead; the ponderous saddle-bags, which are merely
laid on the saddle, shoot forward athwart the horse's neck, the horse's
nose roots quite a furrow in the road, and the horse's owner picks
himself up and takes a woeful survey of his own figure. It is needless to
say that the survey includes a good deal more real estate than the hadji
cares to claim, even though it be the semi-sacred soil of the Meshed
Plain.

The poor horse is altogether too tired to attempt to recover his legs of
his own inclination; but, regarding him as the author of his ignominious
misadventure, the hadji surveys him with a wrathful eye for a moment,
mutters a few awful imprecations--imported, no doubt, from Mazanderan--and
then attacks him savagely about the head with the whip. In his wrath and
determination to make a lasting impression of each blow given, the hadji
emphasizes each visitation with a very audible grunt; and, to speak
correctly, so does the horse. It goes without saying, however, that
master and animal grunt from widely different motives; although, so far
as the mere audible performance is concerned, one grunt might almost be
an echo of the other.

At length, by adopting a more circumspect pace, we reach the gate of the
holy city about sunset without further mishap. The hadji leads the way
through a bewildering labyrinth of narrow streets that consist of an open
sewage-ditch in the centre, at present full of filth, and a narrow
footway of rough, broken, and mud-bespattered cobble-stones on either
side. Of course we are followed through these fearful thoroughfares by a
surging and vociferous crowd of people such as a Central Asian city alone
can produce; but I can this time happily afford to smile at these usually
irritating accompaniments to my arrival in a populous city, for ten
minutes after entering the gate finds me shaking hands with Mr. Gray, the
genial telegraphist of the Afghan Boundary Commission. With a
well-guarded gate between our cosey quarters and the shouting mob
outside, the evening is spent very pleasantly and quietly, in striking
comparison with what it would have been had no one been here to afford me
a place of r