e even above their fellows, if such
can be possible, but they are well-behaved and mild-mannered with it.
After taking the ragged edge off their curiosity by riding up and down
the main thoroughfare of the village, the keeper of a mercantile affair
locks the bicycle up in his room, and I spend the evening hobnobbing with
him and his customers in his little stall-like place of business. Kakh is
famous for the production of little seedless raisins like those of
Smyrna. Bushels of these are kicking about the place, and our merchant
friend becomes filled with a wild idea that I might, perchance, buy the
lot. A moment's reflection would convince him that ten bushels of
sickly-sweet raisins would be about the last thing he could sell to a
person travelling on a bicycle; but his supply of raisins is evidently so
outrageously ahead of the demand that his ambition to reduce his stock
obscures his better judgment like a cloud, and places him in the position
of a drowning man clutching wildly at a straw.

Considerable opium is also grown hereabouts, and the people make it into
sticks about the size of a carpenter's pencil; hundreds of these also
occupy the merchant's shelves. He seems to have very little that isn't
grown in the neighborhood except tea and loaf-sugar.

Eyots, who were absent in their fields when I arrived, come crowding
around the store in the evening, bothering me to ride; the shop-keeper
bids them wait till my departure in the morning, telling them I am not a
luti, riding simply to let people see. He provides me with a door that
fastens inside, and I am soon in the land of dreams.

Early in the morning I am awakened by people pounding at the door and
shouting, "A/tab, Sahib-a/tab.'" It is the belated ryots of yesterday
eve; thoroughly determined to be on hand and see the start, they are
letting me know that it is sunrise.

A boisterous mountain stream, tearing along at racing speed over a rocky
bed a hundred and fifty yards wide, provides Kakh with perpetual music,
and furnishes travellers going southward with an interesting time getting
across. This stream must very frequently become a raging torrent, quite
impassable; for although it is little more than knee-deep this morning,
the swift water carries down stones as large as a brick, that strike
against the ankles and well-nigh knock one off his feet.

Beyond Kakh the trail winds its circuitous way through a mountainous
region, following one little stream to