uns through half the length of the village
first, the personal habits of a Mohammedan population insure that it
reaches the umbar in anything but a fit condition for human consumption.
But the Koran teaches that flowing water cannot be contaminated or
defiled, consequently, when he takes a drink or fills the village
reservoir, your thoroughbred Mussulman never troubles his head about what
is going on up-stream. The Koran is to him a more reliable guide for his
own good than the evidence of all his seven senses combined.

Stagnant pools of water, covered, even this early in the season (March
12th), with green scum, breed fever and mosquitoes galore in Aradan; the
people know it, acknowledge it readily, and suffer from it every summer,
but they take no steps to remedy the evil; the spirit of public
enterprise has dwindled to such dimensions in provincial Persia, that it
is no longer equal to filling up a few fever-breeding pools of water in
the centre of a village. The telegraph-jee himself acknowledges that the
water-holes cause fever and mosquitoes, but, intelligent and enlightened
mortal though he be in comparison with his fellow-villagers, when
questioned about it, he replies: "Inshalla! the water don't matter; if it
is our kismet to take the fever and die, nothing can prevent it; if it is
our kismet not to take it, nothing can give it to us." Such unanswerable
logic could only originate in the brain of a fatalist; these people are
all fatalists, and--as we can imagine--especially so when the
doctrine comes in handy to dodge doing anything for the public weal.

All Persian villages, except those clustered about the immediate vicinity
of a large city, have some peculiarity of their own to offer in the
matter of the people's dress. The pantaloons of any Persian village are
not by any means stylish garments, according to Western ideas; but the
male bipeds of Aradan have something really extraordinary to offer, even
among the many startling patterns of this garment met with in Eastern
lands. To note the quantity of material that enters into the composition
of a pair of Aradan pantaloons, would lead an uninitiated person into
thinking the people all millionaires, were it not likewise observed that
the material is but coarse blue cotton, woven and dyed by the wearer's
wife, mother, or sister. One of the most conspicuous features about them
is that their shape--if they can truthfully be said to have any
shape--seems to be a