the rough, ill-fitting breech-straps and ropes have literally seesawed their way through the skin and deep into the flesh, and are still rasping deeper and deeper every day, no attempt whatever being made to remedy this evil; on the contrary, their pitiless drivers urge them on by prodding the raw sores with sharpened sticks, and by belaboring them unceasingly with an instrument of torture in the shape of whips with six inches of ordinary trace-chain for a lash.  As if the noble army of Persian donkey drivers were not satisfied with the refinement of physical cruelty to which they have attained, they add insult to injury by talking constantly to their donkeys while driving them along, and accusing them of all the crimes in the calendar and of every kind of disreputable action.  Fancy the bitter sense of humiliation that must overcome the proud, haughty spirit of a mouse-colored jackass at being prodded in an open wound with a sharp stick and hearing himself at the same time thus insultingly addressed:  “Oh, thou son of a burnt father and murderer of thine own mother, would that I myself had died rather than my father should have lived to see me drive such a brute as thou art.” yet this sort of talk is habitually indulged in by the barbarous drivers.  While young, the donkeys’ nostrils are slit open clear up to the bridge-bone; this is popularly supposed among the Persians to be an improvement upon nature in that it gives them greater freedom of respiration.  Instead of the well known clucking sound used among ourselves as a persuasive, the Persian makes a sound not unlike the bleating of a sheep; a stranger, being within hearing and out of sight of a gang of donkey drivers in a hurry to reach their destination, would be more likely to imagine himself in the vicinity of a flock of sheep than anything else.  As is usually the case, a volunteer guide bobs serenely up immediately I enter the city, and I follow confidently along, thinking he is piloting me to the English consulate, as I have requested; instead of this he steers me into the custom-house and turns me over to the officials.  These worthy gentlemen, after asking me to ride around the custom-house yard, pretend to become altogether mystified about what they ought to do with the bicycle, and in the absence of any precedent to govern themselves by, finally conclude among themselves that the proper thing would be to confiscate it.  Obtaining a guide to show me to the residence of Mr. Abbott, the English consul-general, that energetic representative of Her Majesty’s government smiles audibly at the thoughts of their mystification, and then writes them a letter couched in terms of humorous reproachfulness, asking them what in the name of Allah and the Prophet they mean by confiscating a traveller’s horse, his carriage, his camel, his everything on legs and wheels consolidated into the beautiful vehicle with which he is journeying to Teheran to see the Shah, and all around the world to see everybody and everything?