the
seductive condiment of novelty, the stream is sufficiently narrow at one
place to be overcome with a running jump; but people cannot take running
jumps encumbered with a bicycle. The bicycle, however, can quickly and
easily be taken into several parts and thrown across, the jump made, and
the wheel put together again.

Packages, pedals, and backbone with rear wheel are tossed successfully
across, but the big wheel attached to fork and handle-bar, unfortunately
rolls back and disappears with a splash beneath the water. The details of
the unhappy task of recovering this all-important piece of property--how I
have to call into requisition for the first time the small, strong rope I
have carried from Constantinople--how, in the absence of anything in the
shape of a stick, in all the unproductive country around, I have to
persuade my unwilling and goose-pimpled frame into the water and duck my
devoted head beneath the waves several times before succeeding in passing
a slip-noose over the handle--is too harrowing a tale to tell; it makes me
shiver and shrink within myself, even as I write.

Beyond the stream the road approaches the southern framework of the plain
with a barely discernible rise, and dry, hard, paths afford fair
wheeling. Looking back one can see the white, uneven crest of the Elburz
Range peeping over the lesser chain of hills crossed over yesterday,
showing wondrously sharp and clear in the transparent atmosphere of a
more or less desert country.

A region of red-clay hills and innumerable little streams ends my riding
for the present, and the road eventually leads into a cul-de-sac, the
source of the little streams and the home of spongy morasses whose
deceptive mossy surface may or may not bear one's weight. Bound about the
cul-de-sac is a curious jumble of rocks and red-clay heights; the strata
of the former inclining to the perpendicular and sometimes rising like
parallel walls above the earth, reminding one of the "Devil's Slide" in
Weber Canon, Utah. A stiff pass leads over the brow of the range, and on
the summit is perched another little stone tower; but no valiant champion
of defenceless wayfarers issues forth to proffer his protection
here--perhaps our acquaintance of yesterday comes down here when he wants
a change of air.

From the pass the descent is into a picturesque region of huge rocks and
splendid streams that come bubbling out from among them, and farther
along is a more open space