large caravanserai with a red-columned portico to the east;
also a special place for the Sadrazam, the Prime Minister, when
travelling on this road; a garden with a few sickly trees, and that is
all.

On leaving the caravanserai one skirts the mountain side to the west, and
goes up it to the horse station situated in a most desolate spot. From
this point one gets a bird's-eye view of the whole lake. Its waters,
owing to evaporation, seem to withdraw, leaving a white sediment of salt
along the edge. The road from the Khafe-khana runs now in a perfectly
straight line S.W., and, with the exception of the first short incline,
is afterwards quite flat, passing along and very little above the lake
shore, from which the road is about one mile distant. The lake is to the
S.E. of the road at this point. To the S.W., W., N.W., N., lies a long
row of dark-brown hills which circle round the valley we are about to
cross.

The sunset on that particular night was one in which an amateur painter
would have revelled. A dirty-brown foreground as flat as a
billiard-table--a sharp cutting edge of blue hill-tops against a bilious
lemon-yellow sky blending into a ghastly cinabrese red, which gradually
vanished into a sort of lead blue. There are few countries where the sun
appears and disappears above and from the earth's surface with less glow
than in Persia. Of course, the lack of moisture in the atmosphere largely
accounts for this. During the several months I was in the country--though
for all I know this may have been my misfortune only--I never saw more
than half a dozen sunsets that were really worth intense admiration, and
these were not in Western Persia. The usual sunsets are effects of a
washed-out sort, with no force and no beautiful contrasts of lights and
colours such as one sees in Egypt, in Morocco, in Spain, Italy, or even,
with some amount of toning down, in our little England.

The twilight in Persia is extremely short.

CHAPTER XXIV

Severe wind--Kum, the holy city--Thousands of
graves--Conservative Mullahs--Ruin and decay--Leather
tanning--The gilt dome--Another extortion--Ingenious
bellows--Damovend--The scenery--Passangun--Evening prayers--A
contrivance for setting charcoal alight--Putrid water--Post
horses--Sin Sin--Mirage--Nassirabad--Villages near Kashan.

On a deserted road, sleepy and shaken, with the wind blowing so hard that
it tore and carried away all the cotton cu