and Kerman called in Persia contemptuously "Guebres," were subjected
to degradations and restrictions of the worst kind. Now their condition,
under a stronger government and some foreign influence, has slightly
ameliorated, but is not yet entirely secure against the cruelty,
fanaticism, and injustice of the Mullahs and officials in the place.

If Yezd is, for its size, now the most enterprising trading centre of
Persia, it is mostly due to the Guebres living there. Although held in
contempt by the Mullahs and by the Mahommedans in general, these Guebres
are manly fellows, sound in body and brain, instead of lascivious,
demoralized, effeminate creatures like their tyrants. Hundreds of years
of oppression have had little effect on the moral and physical condition
of the Guebres. They are still as hardy and proud as when the whole
country belonged to them; nor has the demoralizing contact of the present
race, to whom they are subject, had any marked effect on their industry,
which was the most remarkable characteristic in the ancient Zoroastrians.

The Zoroastrian religion teaches that every man must earn his food by his
own exertion and enterprise,--quite unlike the Mahommedan teaching, that
the height of bliss is to live on the charity of one's neighbours, which
rule, however, carries a counterbalancing conviction that the more money
dispensed in alms, the greater the certainty of the givers obtaining
after death a seat in heaven.

One of the most refreshing qualities of the Guebres (and of the Parsees
in India) is that they are usually extraordinarily truthful for natives
of Asia, and their morality, even in men, is indeed quite above the
average. There are few races among which marriages are conducted on more
sensible lines and are more successful. The man and woman united by
marriage live in friendly equality, and are a help to one another. Family
ties are very strong, and are carried down even to distant relations,
while the paternal and maternal love for their children, and touching
filial love for their parents, is most praiseworthy and deserves the
greatest admiration.

The Mussulmans themselves, although religiously at variance and not keen
to follow the good example of the Guebres, admit the fact that the
Zoroastrians are honest and good people. It is principally the Mullahs
who are bitter against them and instigate the crowds to excesses. There
is not such a thing for the Guebres as justice in Persia, and eve