y as possible.

Happy in the contemplation of a whole chicken for supper, I sit around
and chat and drink tea with my disinterested friend for the space of an
hour. To a hungry person an hour seems an ominously long period of time
in which to cook a chicken, and, becoming impatient, the Persian
gentleman's servant volunteers to go inside and investigate. I fancy
detecting a shadow of amusement passing over the face of the gentleman as
his servant departs, and when he returns with the intelligence that the
chicken won't be tender enough to eat for another hour, his risibilities
get the better of his politeness and he gives way to uncontrollable
laughter. Then it is that a gleam of enlightenment steals over my
unsuspecting soul and tells me why my guileless fellow-traveller so
politely and yet so firmly selected the smallest of the fowls--he is a
better judge of Persian "morges" than I. The woman finally turns up,
bringing the result of her two hours' culinary perseverance in a large
pewter bowl; she has cut the chicken up into several pieces and has been
industriously keeping the pot boiling from the beginning. The result of
this laudable effort is meat of gutta-percha toughness, upon which one's
teeth are exercised in vain; but I make a very good supper after all by
breaking bread into the broth. I don't know but that the patriarchal
ruler of the roost makes at least the richer broth.

Thin ice covers the water when I leave this caravanserai in the gray of
the morning, and the Persian travellers, who nearly always start before
daybreak, have already departed. Stories were heard yesterday evening of
streams between here and the southern chain of mountains, deep and
difficult to cross; and I pull out fully expecting to have to strip and
do some disagreeable work in the water. Considerable mud is encountered,
and three small streams, not over three feet deep, are crossed; but
further on I am brought to a stand by a deep, sluggish stream flowing
along ten feet below the level of the ground. Though deep, it is very
narrow in places, and might almost be described as a yawning crack in the
earth, filled with water to within ten feet of the top.

A little way up stream is a spot fordable for horses, and, of course,
fordable also for a cycler; but the prevailing mud and the chilliness of
the morning combine to influence me to try another plan. A happy plan it
seems at the moment, a credit to my inventive genius, and spiced with