Only those who have experienced it know anything of the pleasure of two Europeans meeting and conversing in a country like Persia, where the habits and customs of the natives are so different, and, to most travellers, uncongenial, and only to be tolerated for a time.

I have met Mr. Mclntyre in Teheran, so we are not total strangers, which, of course, makes it still more agreeable.  After the customary interchange of news, and the discussion of refreshments, Mr. Mclntyre hands me a telegram from Teheran, which bears a date several days old.  It is from the British Legation, notifying me that permission is refused to go through the Turcoman country; an appendage from the Charge d’Affaires suggests that I repair to Astrakhan and try the route through Siberia.  And this, then, is the result of General Melnikoff’s genial smiles and ready promises of assistance; after providing myself with proper money and information for the Turkestan route, on the strength of the Russian Minister’s promises, I am overtaken, when three hundred miles away, with a veto against which anything I might say or do would be of no avail!

Sultan Ahmed Mirza, a sou of Prince Anushirvan, is deputy governor of Shahrood, responsible to his father; and ere I have arrived an hour the usual request is sent round for a “tomasha,” the word now used by people wanting to see me ride, and which really means an exhibition.  His place is found in a brick court-yard with the usual central tank, and the airy rooms of the building all opening upon it, and once again comes the feeling of playing a rather ridiculous role, as I circle awkwardly around the tank over very uneven bricks, and around short corners where an upset would precipitate me into the tank—­amid, I can’t help thinking, “roars of laughter.”  The Prince is very lavish of his flowery Persian compliments, and says, “You English have now left nothing more to do but to bring the dead back to life.”  In the court-yard my attention is called to a set of bastinado poles and loops, and Mr. McIntyre asks the Prince if he hasn’t a prisoner on hand, so that he can give us a tomasha in return for the one we are giving him; but it is now the Persian New Year, and the prisoners have all been liberated.

Here, gentle reader, in Shahrood—­but it now behooves us to be dark and mysterious, and deal in hints and whispers, for the Persian proprieties must not be ruthlessly violated and then as ruthlessly exposed to satisfy the prying curiosity of far off Frangistan that would never do.

Behold, then, Mr. Mclntyre absent; behold all male humans absent save myself and a couple of sable eunuchs, whose smooth, whiskerless faces betray inward amusement at the extreme novelty of the situation, and we all alone between the high brick walls that encircle the secrecy of an inner court—­and yet not all alone, fortell it in whispers—­some half-dozen shrouded female forms are clustered together in one corner.  Yashmaks are drawn aside, and plump oval