The Ameer himself is found seated on a plain divan at the open-windowed front, toying with a string of amber beads; a dozen or so retainers are standing about in respectful and expectant attitudes, ready at a moment’s notice to obey any command he may give or to anticipate his personal wants.  He is a stoutly built, rather ponderous sort of individual, with a full, rotund face and a heavy, unintellectual, but good-natured expression; one’s first impression of him is apt to be less flattering to his head than to his heart.  He is a person, however, that improves with acquaintance, and is probably more intelligent than he looks.  He seems to be living here in a very plain and unpretentious manner; no gaudy stained glass, no tinsel, no mirror-work, no vain gew-gaws of any description impart a cheap and garish glitter to the place; no gorgeous apparel bedecks his ample proportions.  Clad in the ordinary dress of a well-to-do Persian nobleman, Heshmet-i-Molk, happy and contented in the enjoyment of creature comforts and the universal esteem of his people, probably finds his chief pleasure in sitting where we now find him, looking out upon the green trees and glimmering waters of the garden, smoking his kalian, and attending to the affairs of state in a quiet, unostentatious manner.  With a refreshing absence of ceremonial, he discusses with me the prospects of my being able to reach India overland.  The conversation on his part, however, almost takes the form of trying to persuade me from my purpose altogether, and particularly not to attempt Afghanistan.

“The Harood is as wide as from here to the other side of the lake yonder (200 yards); tund (swift) as a swift-running horse and deep as this house,” he informs me.

“No bridge? no ferry-boat? no means of getting across?”

“Eitch” (no), replies the Ameer.  “Pull neis, kishti neis.”

“Can’t it be forded with camels?”

“Shutor neis.”

“No village, with people to assist with poles or skins to make a raft?”

“Afghani dasht-adam (nomads), no poles; you might perhaps find skins; but the river is tund-t-u-n-d! skins neis, poles neis; t-u-n-d!!” and the Ameer points to a bird hopping about on the garden walk, intimating that the Harood flows as swiftly as the flight of a bird.

The result of the conference I have been so anxiously looking forward to is anything but an encouraging picture—­a picture of insurmountable obstacles on every hand.  The deep sand and burning heat of the dreadful Lut Desert intervenes between me and the Mekran coast; the route through Beloochistan, barely passable with camels and guides and skins of water in the winter, is not only impracticable for anything in the summer, but there is the additional obstacle of the spring floods of the Helmund and the Seistan Lake.

The Ameer’s description of the Lut Desert and Beloochistan is but a confirmation of my own already-arrived-at conclusions concerning the utter impracticability of crossing either in the summer and with a bicycle; but the wish gives birth to the thought that perhaps he may not unlikely be indulging in the Persian weakness for exaggeration in his graphic portrayal of the difficulties presented by the Harood.