a stifling hot place like Kashan, to
find large ice store-houses. Yet plenty of ice is to be got here during
the winter, especially from the mountains close at hand. These ice-houses
have a pit dug in the ground to a considerable depth, and are covered
over with a high conical roof of mud. To the north-east, outside the
city, in the suburbs a great many of these ice store-houses are to be
seen, as well as a small, blue-tiled roof of a mosque, the pilgrimage of
Habbib-Mussah.

There is some cultivation round about Kashan, principally of cotton,
tobacco, melons and water-melons, which one sees in large patches
wherever there is water obtainable.

Kashan is protected by mountains to the south and west, and by low hills
to the north-west, but to the north and north-east the eye roams
uninterrupted over an open, flat, dusty, dreary plain of a light brown
colour until it meets the sky line on the horizon, softly dimmed by a
thick veil of disturbed sand. Due east lie the Siah Kuh (mountains), then
comes another gap in the horizon to the south-east.

In the dark and gloomy bazaar the din of hundreds of wooden hammers on as
many pieces of copper being made into jugs, trays, pots or pans, is
simply deafening, echoed as it is under the vaulted roofs, the sound
waves clashing in such an unmusical and confused way as to be absolutely
diabolical. A few of these copper vessels are gracefully ornamented and
inlaid, but the majority are coarse in their manufacture. They are
exported all over the country. The manufactured silk, the other important
product of Kashan, finds its way principally to Russia.

The inhabitants are most industrious and, like all industrious people,
are extremely docile, amenable to reason, and easy to manage. The Mullahs
are said to have much power over the population, and, in fact, we find in
Kashan no less than 18 mosques with five times that number of shrines,
counting large and small.

I experienced some difficulty in obtaining relays of fresh post horses,
the mail having been despatched both north and south the previous night,
and therefore no horses were in the station. At seven in the evening I
was informed that five horses had returned and were at my disposal.
Twenty minutes later the loads were on their saddles, and I was on the
road again.

After travelling under the pitch-dark vaulted bazaars (where, as it was
impossible to see where one was going, the horses had to be led), and
threading our wa