e village to see the old
castle, and the umbars that supply the village with water. The telegraph-
gee cleared the walls upon his arrival, but the housetops are out of his
jurisdiction, and before starting he wisely suggests putting the bicycle
in some conspicuous position, as an inducement for the crowd to remain
and concentrate their curiosity upon it, otherwise there would be no
keeping them from following us about the village. We set it up in plain
view on the bala-khana, and returning from our walk, are amused to find
the old farrash delivering a lecture on cycling.

The fortress at Aradan is the first one of the kind one sees when
travelling eastward from Teheran, but as we shall come to a larger and
better preserved specimen at Lasgird, in a couple of days, it will,
perhaps, be advisable to postpone a description till then. They are all
pretty much alike, and were all built to serve the same purpose, of
affording shelter and protection from Turkoman raiders. The Aradan umbars
are nothing extraordinary, except perhaps that the conical brick-work
roofs are terraced so that one can walk, like ascending stairs, to the
summit; and perhaps, also, because they are in a good state of repair
--asufficiently unusual thing in a Persian village to merit remark. These
umbars are filled by allowing the water to flow in from a street ditch
connecting with the little stream to which every village owes its
existence; when the umbar is full, a few spadefuls of dirt shut the water
off.

The chief occupation of the Eastern female is undoubtedly carrying water;
the women of Oriental villages impress the observant Occidental, as
people who will carry water-worlds may be created and worlds destroyed;
all things else may change, and habits and costumes become revolutionized
by the march of time, but nothing will prevent the Oriental female from
carrying water, and carrying it in huge earthenware jugs! At any hour of
the day--I won't speak positively about the night--women may be seen
at the unbars filling large earthenware jugs, coming and going, going and
coming. I don't remember ever passing one of these cisterns without
seeing women there, filling and carrying away jars of water. No doubt
there are occasional odd moments when no women are there, but any person
acquainted with village life in the East will not fail to recognize this
as simply the plain, unvarnished truth. As the ditch from which the umbar
is filled not infrequently r