for the night, my three “protectors” squat around the smouldering embers of the camel-thorn fire, discussing the all-absorbing topic of my money.  Little do they suspect that concealed in a leathern money-belt beneath my clothes are one hundred Russian gold Imperials, the money obtained in Teheran for the journey through Turkestan and Siberia to the Pacific.  Though sleeping with the traditional one eye open and my Smith & Wesson where it can be readily used, there is little apprehension of being robbed, owing to their obligation to take back the receipt for my safe delivery to Heshmet-i-Molk.

It is the weather-changeful period of the full moon, and about midnight a clap of thunder rolls over the desert, and a smart shower descends from a small dark cloud, that sails slowly across the sky, obscuring for a brief period the moist-looking countenance of the moon, and then disappears.  A couple of hours later a rush of wind is heard careering across the desert toward us, accompanied by a wildly scudding cloud.  The cloud peppers us with hailstones in the most lively manner, and the wind strikes us almost with the force of a tornado, knocking over the bicycle, which I have leaned against a clump of shrubs at my head, and favoring us with a blinding fusilade of sand and gravel.

It rains and hails enough to make us wet and uncomfortable, and the mudbake gets up and kindles another fire.  In a short time the squally midnight weather has given place to a dead calm; the clouds have dispersed; the moon shines all the brighter from having had its face washed; the stars twinkle themselves out one by one as the gray dawn gradually makes itself manifest.  It is a most lovely morning; the bruising hailstones and the moistening rain have proved themselves stimulants in the laboratory of the wild-thyme shrubs, setting free and disseminating a new supply of aroma; and while until now the voice of animate nature has been conspicuous by its absence, the morning vespers of song-birds seed almost to be issuing, like flowers, from the ground.  There is an indescribable charm about this morning’s experience on the desert; dawn appears, the moon hangs low-suspended in the heavens, the birds carol merrily, and every inspiration one takes is a tonic to stimulate the system.  Half an hour later the sun has risen, the song-birds have one and all lapsed into silence, the desert is itself again, stern, silent, uncompromising, and apparently destitute of life.

Total depravity, it appears, has not yet claimed my worthy escort for its own entirely, for while saddling up their horses during this brief display of nature’s kindlier mood they call my attention to the singing of the birds and the grateful perfumery in the air.  The germ of goodness still lingers within their semi-civilized conception of things about them; they are the children of Nature, and are profoundly impressed by their mother’s varying moods.  Their prostrations toward Mecca and their matutinal prayers to Allah seem to gain