The rain has cleared up, but the weather looks unsettled, as about eight o’clock next morning our little party starts eastward under the guidance of a villager whom I have employed to guide us out of the immediate range of mountains, the sowars betraying a general ignorance of the commencement of the route.

My escort are a great improvement as regards their arms and equipments upon “The Aged.”  Among the three are two percussion double-barrelled shot-guns, a percussion musket, six horse-pistols of various degrees of serviceableness, swords, daggers, ornamental goat’s-paunch powder-pouches, peculiar pendent brass rings containing spring nippers for carrying and affixing caps, leathern water-bottles, together with various odds and ends of warlike accoutrements distributed about their persons or their saddles.

“Inshallah, Ghalakua, Gh-al-a-kua!” exclaims the khan, as he swings himself into the saddle.  “Inshallah, Al-lah,” is the response of the mirza and the mudbake, as they carelessly follow his example, and the march across the Dasht-i-na-oomid begins.

The ryot leads the way afoot, following along the partially empty beds of mountain torrents, through patches of rank camel-thorn, over bowlder-strewn areas and drifts of sand, sometimes following along the merest suggestion of a trail, but quite as frequently following no trail at all.  At certain intervals occurs a piece of good ridable ground; our villager-guide then looks back over his shoulder and bounds ahead with a swinging trot, eager to enjoy the spectacle of the bicycle spinning along at his heels; the escort bring up the rear in a leisurely manner, absorbed in the discussion of “pool.”

Several miles are covered in this manner, when we emerge upon a more open country, and after consulting at some length with the villager, the khan declares himself capable of finding the way without further assistance.  It is a strange, wild country, where we part from our local guide; it looks as though it might be the battleground of the elements.  A trail, that is only here and there to be made out, follows a southeasternly course down a verdureless tract of country strewn with rocks and bowlders and furrowed by the rushing waters of torrents now dried up.  Jagged rocks and bowlders are here mingled in indescribable confusion on a surface of unproductive clay and smaller stones.  On the east stretches a waste of low, stony hills, and on the west, the mountains we have recently emerged from rise two thousand feet above us in an almost unbroken wall of precipitous rock.

By and by the khan separates himself from the party and gallops away out of sight to the left, his declared mission being to purchase “goosht-i” (mutton) from a camp of nomads, whose whereabouts he claims to know.  As the commissaire of the party, I have, of course, intrusted him with a sufficient quantity of money to meet our expenses; and the mirza and the mudbake no sooner find themselves alone than another excellent trait of their character conies to the surface.  Upon comparing their thoughts, they find themselves wonderfully unanimous in their suspicions as to the honesty of the khan’s intentions toward—­not me, but themselves!