A willing Foorgian divests himself of everything but his hat, and carries the bicycle across the stream, while I am taken up behind the mirza.  As the mirza’s iron-gray gingerly enters the water, an interesting and instructive spectacle is afforded by a hundred or more Foorgians following the shining example of the classic figure carrying the bicycle, for the purpose of being on hand to see me start across the plain toward Tabbas.

Some of these good people are wearing turbans the size of a bandbox; others wear enormous sheep-skin busbies.  A number of tall, angular figures stemming the turbid stream in the elegant costumes of our first parents, but wearing Khorassani busbies or Beerjand turbans, makes a bizarre and striking picture.

A gravelly trail, with the gradient slightly in my favor, enables me to create a better impression of a bicycler’s capabilities on the mind of the mirza and the sowar than was possible yesterday, by quickly leaving them far in the rear.  Some miles are covered when I make a halt for them to overtake me, seeking the welcome shelter of a half-ruined wayside umbar.

An Eliaute camp is but a short distance away, and several sun-painted children of the desert are eagerly interviewing the bicycle when my escort comes galloping along; not seeing me anywhere in view ahead, they had wondered what had become of their wheel-winged charge and are quite relieved at finding me here hobnobbing with the Eliautes behind the umbar.

The mirza’s fond mother-in-law has presented him with a quantity of dried pears with half a walnut imbedded in each quarter; during a brief halt at the umbar these Darmian delicacies are fished out of his saddle-bags and duly pronounced upon, and the genial Eliautes contribute flowing bowls of doke (soured milk, prepared in some manner that prevents its spoiling).

High noon finds us at our destination for the day, the village of Tabbas, famous in all the country around for a peculiar windmill used in grinding grain.  A grist-mill, or mills, consists of a row of one-storied mud huts, each of which contains a pair of grindstones.  Connecting with the upper stone is a perpendicular shaft of wood which protrudes through the roof and extends fifteen feet above it.  Cross-pieces run through at right angles and, plaited with rushes, transform the shaft into an upright four-bladed affair that the wind blows around and turns the millstones below.

So far, this is only a very primitive and clumsy method of harnessing the wind; but connected with it is a very ingenious contrivance that redeems it entirely from the commonplace.  A system of mud walls are built about, the same height or a little higher than the shaft, in such a manner as to concentrate and control the wind in the interest of the miller, regardless of which direction it is blowing in.

The suction created by the peculiar disposition of the walls whisks the rude wattle sails around in the most lively manner.  Forty of these mills are in operation at Tabbas; and to see them all in full swing, making a loud “sweeshing” noise as they revolve, is a most extraordinary sight.  Aside from Tabbas, these novel grist-mills are only to be seen in the territory about the Seistan Lake.