“Ever hear of Dadur?” queries Mr. Gray.  “Ever hear of Dadur, the place of which the Persians tritely say:  ’Seeing that there is Dadur, why did Allah, then, make the infernal regions?’ That is somewhere in Beloochistan.  You’ll find yourself slowly broiling to death on a geographical gridiron if you attempt to reach India down that way.”

“Never mind; tell them at Teheran I am going that way anyhow.”

Having entered upon this decision, I bid my genial host farewell on April 7th, and mounting at the door, depart in the presence of a well-behaved crowd of spectators.  In my pocket is a general letter from the Governor-General of Khorassan to subordinate officials of the province, ordering them to render me any assistance I may require, and another from a prominent person in Meshed to his friend Heshmet-i-Molk, the Ameer of Kain and Governor of Seistan, a powerful and influential chief, with his seat of government at Beerjand.

Couched in the sentimental language of the country, one of these letters concludes with the touching remark:  “The Sahib, of his own choice is travelling like a dervish, with no protection but the protection of Allah.”

It is a fine bracing morning as I leave the Mecca of Khorassan behind, and the paths leading round outside the walls and moat of the city from gate to gate afford excellent wheeling.  The Beerjand trail branches off from the Teheran and Meshed road about a farsakh east of Shahriffabad; for this distance I shall be retraversing the road by which I came, and shall be confronted at every turn of my wheel by reminiscences of dried fish, a Mazanderau dervish, and an angular steed.

The streams that under the influence of the storm ran thigh-deep have now dwindled to mere rivulets, and the narrow, miry trail through the melting snow has become dry and smooth enough to ride wherever the grade permits.  The hills are verdant with the green young life of early spring, and are clothed in one of nature’s prettiest costumes—­a costume of seal-brown rocks and green turf studded with a profusion of blue and yellow flowers.

Shahriffabad is reached early in the afternoon, and the threatening aspect of the changed weather forbids going any farther today.

Shortly after taking up my quarters in the chapar-khana, a party of Persian travellers appear upon the scene, and with them a fussy little man in big round spectacles and semi-European clothes.  Scarcely have they had time to alight and seek out quarters than the little man makes his appearance at my menzil door in all the glory of a crimson velvet dressing-cap and blue slippers, and beaming gladsomely through his moon-like spectacles, he comes forward and without further ceremony shakes hands.  “Some queer little French professor, geologist, entomologist, or something, wandering about the country in search of scientific knowledge,” is the instinctive conclusion I arrive at the moment he appears; and my greeting of “bonjour, monsieur,” is quite as involuntary as the conclusion.