pean Telegraph--The
Zein-ed-din tower--The Meh-rab shrine--The Madrassah Shah--The
Panja Shah--The hand of Nazareth Abbas--The Fin Palace--Hot
springs--The tragic end of an honest Prime Minister--Ice
store-houses--Cultivation--In the bazaar--Brass work--Silk--The
Mullahs and places of worship--Wretched post-horses--The
Gyabrabad caravanserai--An imposing dam--Fruit-tree
groves--Picturesque Kohrut village.

Kashan, 3,260 feet above sea level, is famous for its gigantic and
poisonous scorpions, for its unbearable heat, its capital silk works, and
its copper utensils, which, if not always ornamental, are proclaimed
everlasting. The silk manufactories are said to number over three
hundred, including some that make silk carpets, of world-wide renown. The
population is 75,000 souls or thereabouts. Nothing is ever certain in
Persia. There are no hotels in the city, and it is considered undignified
for Europeans to go to a caravanserai--of which there are some three
dozen in Kashan--or to the Chappar Khana.

The Indo-European Telegraphs have a large two-storied building outside
the north gate of the city, in charge of an Armenian clerk, where,
through the courtesy of the Director of Telegraphs, travellers are
allowed to put up, and where the guests' room is nice and clean, with a
useful bedstead, washstand, and a chair or two.

A capital view of Kashan is obtained from the roof of the Telegraph
building. A wide road, the one by which I had arrived, continues to the
north-east entrance of the bazaar. The town itself is divided into two
sections--the city proper, surrounded by a high wall, and the suburbs
outside. To the south-west, in the town proper, rises the slender tower
of Zein-ed-din, slightly over 100 feet high, and not unlike a factory
chimney. Further away in the distance--outside the city--the mosque of
Taj-ed-din with its blue pointed roof, adjoins the famous Meh-rab shrine,
from which all the most ancient and beautiful tiles have been stolen or
sold by avid Mullahs for export to Europe.

Then we see the two domes of the mosque and theological college, the
Madrassah Shah, where young future Mullahs are educated. To the west of
the observer from our high point of vantage, and north-west of the town,
lies another mosque, the Panja Shah, in which the hand of one of the
prophets, Nazareth Abbas, is buried. A life-size hand and portion of the
forearm, most beautifully carved in marb