elf, however--declined to
take advantage of his offer and declared that we should all sit on the
floor in the best Persian style, an attention which was greatly
appreciated by our host and by his friends.

It was with some dismay that I saw more trays of food being conveyed into
the room, until the whole floor was absolutely covered with trays, large
and small, and dishes, cups and saucers, all brim-full of something or
other to eat.

[Illustration: A View of the Kerman Plain from the "Ya Ali" Inscription.

(How steep the ascent to the inscription is can be seen by the mountain
side on left of observer.)]

[Illustration: Wives Returning from the Pilgrimage for Sterile Women.]

Persian food of the better kind and in moderation is not at all bad nor
unattractive. It is quite clean,--cleaner, if it comes to that, than the
general run of the best European cooking. The meat is ever fresh and
good, the chickens never too high--in fact, only killed and bled a few
minutes before they are cooked; the eggs always newly laid in fact, and
not merely in theory, and the vegetables ever so clean and tasty. As for
the fruit of Central and Southern Persia, it is eminently excellent and
plentiful.

The Persians themselves eat with their fingers, which they duly wash
before beginning their meals, but we were given silver forks and spoons
and best English knives. Really to enjoy a Persian meal, however, one's
fingers are quite unapproachable by any more civilised device.

The most sensible part of a Persian meal is its comparative lack of
method and order, anybody picking wherever he likes from the many dishes
displayed in the centre of the room and all round him; but any one
endowed with digestive organs of moderate capacity feels some
apprehension at the mountains of rice and food which are placed before
one, and is expected to devour. A European who wants to be on his best
behaviour finds the last stages of a Persian dinner a positive trial, and
is reminded very forcibly of the terrible fable of the frog that tried to
emulate the cow. To show the reader to what test of expansion one's
capacity is put, no better evidence can be given than a faithful
enumeration of the viands spread before us at the dinner here described,
all of which we were made to taste.

Qalam pal[=a]j[=o] = Cabbage pilao.
Chil[=a]-[=o] = White rice with a soupcon of butter.
Khurish-i-murgh-i-b[=a]dinj[=a]n = Stew of chicken w