I respectfully beg to be excused.  While thus enjoying a pleasant hour in the garden, a series of resounding thwacks are heard somewhere near by, and looking around some intervening shrubs I observe a couple of far-rashes bastinadoing a culprit; seeing me more interested in this novel method of administering justice than in looking at the youngsters trying to climb ropes, the Governor leads the way thither.  The man, evidently a ryot, is lying on his back, his feet are lashed together and held soles uppermost by means of an horizontal pole, while the farrashes briskly belabor them with willow sticks.  The soles of the ryot’s feet are hard and thick as rhinoceros hide almost from habitually walking barefooted, and under these conditions his punishment is evidently anything but severe.  The flagellation goes merrily and uninterruptedly forward until fifty sticks about five feet long and thicker than a person’s thumb are broken over his feet without eliciting any signals of distress from the horny-hoofed ryot, except an occasional sorrowful groan of “A-l-l-ah.”  He is then loosed and limps painfully away, but it looks like a rather hypocritical limp, after all; fifty sticks, by the by, is a comparatively light punishment, several hundred sometimes being broken at a single punishment.  Upon taking my leave the Governor kindly details a couple of soldiers to show me to the best caravanserai, and to remain and protect me from the worry and annoyance of the crowds until my departure from the city.  Arriving at the caravanserai, my valiant protectors undertake to keep the following crowd from entering the courtyard; the crowd refuses to see the justice of this arbitrary proceeding, and a regular pitched battle ensues in the gateway.  The caravanserai-jees reinforce the soldiers, and by laying on vigorously with thick sticks, they finally put the rabble to flight.  They then close the caravanserai gates until the excitement has subsided.  Khoi is a city of perhaps fifty thousand inhabitants, and among them all there is no one able to speak a word of English.  Contemplating the surging mass of woolly-hatted Persians from the bala-khana (balcony; our word is taken from the Persian), of the caravanserai, and hearing nothing but unintelligible language, I detect myself unconsciously recalling the lines:  " Oh it was pitiful; in a whole city full—.”  It is the first large city I have visited without finding somebody capable of speaking at least a few words of my own language.  Locking the bicycle up, I repair to the bazaar, my watchful and zealous attendants making the dust fly from the shoulders of such unlucky wights whose eager inquisitiveness to obtain a good close look brings them within the reach of their handy staves.  We are followed by immense crowds, a Ferenghi being a rara avis in Khoi, and the fame of the wonderful asp-i (horse of iron) has spread like wild-fire through the city.  In the bazaar I obtain Russian silver money, which is the chief currency of the country as far east as Zendjan.  Partly to escape from the worrying crowds, and partly to ascertain the way out next morning, as I intend making an early start, I get the soldiers to take me outside the city wall and show me the Tabreez road.