ed path still separated from you by a thick wide
layer of filthy mud wound its way to the few miserable sheds--the
bazaar--up above. A few trays of grapes, some Persian bread, some
earthenware pottery of the cheapest kind, are displayed in the shop
fronts--and that is all of the Piri-Bazaar. On landing at Enzeli one
hears so much of Piri-Bazaar that one gets to imagine it a big, important
place,--and as it is, moreover, practically the first really typical
Persian place at which one touches, the expectations are high. Upon
arrival there one's heart sinks into one's boots, and one's boots sink
deep into black stinking mud as one takes a very long--yet much too
short--jump from the boat on to what one presumes to be _terra firma_.

With boots clogged and heavy with filth, a hundred people like ravenous
birds of prey yelling in your ears (and picking your pockets if they have
a chance), with your luggage being mercilessly dragged in the mud, with
everybody demanding backshish on all sides, tapping you on the shoulder
or pulling your coat,--thus one lands in real Persia.

In the country of Iran one does not travel for pleasure nor is there any
pleasure in travelling. For study and interest, yes. There is plenty of
both everywhere.

Personally, I invariably make up my mind when I start for the East that
no matter what happens I will on no account get out of temper, and this
self-imposed rule--I must admit--was never, in all my travels, tried to
the tantalising extent that it was in the country of the Shah. The
Persian lower classes--particularly in places where they have come in
contact with Europeans--are well-nigh intolerable. There is nothing that
they will not do to annoy you in every possible way, to extort backshish
from you. In only one way do Persians in this respect differ from other
Orientals. The others usually try to obtain money by pleasing you and
being useful and polite, whereas the Persian adopts the quicker, if not
safer, method of bothering you and giving you trouble to such an
unlimited degree that you are compelled to give something in order to get
rid of him. And in a country where no redress can be obtained from the
police, where laws do not count, and where the lower classes are as
corrupt and unscrupulous as they are in the more civilised parts of
Persia (these remarks do not apply to the parts where few or no Europeans
have been) the only way to save one's self from constant worry and
repressed ang