Upon receipt of the telegram at Shahrood refusing me permission to go through Turkestan, I telegraphed to Mr. Gray, requesting him to obtain leave for me to go to the Boundary Commission Camp, and accompany them back to India, or reach India from the camp alone.  Mr. Gray kindly forwarded my request to the camp, and now urges me to consider myself his guest until the return courier arrives with the answer.  This turns out to mean a stop-over of seven days, and on the second day immense crowds of people assemble in the street, shouting for me to come out and ride the bicycle.  The clamor on the streets renders it impossible for them to transact business in the telegraph office, and several times requests are sent in begging me to appease them and stop the uproar by riding to and fro along the street.  An outer door separates the compound in which the house is built from the street, and to prevent the rabble from invading the premises, and the possibility of unpleasant consequences, the Governor-General stations a guard of four soldiers at the door.  This precaution works very well so far as the common herd are concerned, but every hour through the day little knots of priestly men in the flowing new garments and spotless turbans representing their Noo Roos purchases, or the lamb’s-wool cylinder and semi-European garb of the official, bribe, coerce, or command the guard to let them in.

These persistent people generally stand in a respectful attitude just inside the outer gate, and send word in by a servant that a Shahzedah (relative of the Shah) wishes to see the bicycle.  After the first “Shahzedah” has been treated with courtesy and consideration in deference to his royal relative at Teheran, fully two-thirds of those who come after unblushingly proclaim themselves uncles, cousins, or nephews of “His Majesty, the King of Kings and Ruler of the Universe!” The constant worry and annoyance of these people compel us to adopt measures of self-defence, and so, after admitting about a hundred uncles, twice that number of nephews, and Heaven knows how many cousins, we conclude that blood-relations of the Shah are altogether too numerous in Meshed to be of much consequence.  Soon after arriving at this conclusion, Mr. Gray’s farrash, an Armenian he brought with him from Ispahan, comes in with a message that another Shahzedah has succeeded in getting past the guard and sends in his salaams.  “Shahzedah be d——­d!  Turn him out—­put him outside, and tell the guards to let nobody else in without our permission!”

A moment later the farrash re-enters with the look of a man scarcely able to control his risibilities, and says the man and his friends are still inside the gate.

“Why the devil don’t you put them out, as you are told, then?”

“He says he is the Padishah’s step-father.”

“Well, what if he is the Padishah’s step-father?  It’s nothing to be the Shah’s step-father; the Shah probably has five hundred step-father’s, to say the least—­turn him out.  No; hold hard; let him stay.”