scrambled eggs which I have brought along.  On past Seyudoon and approaching Kasveen, the plain widens to a considerable extent and becomes perfectly level; apparent distances become deceptive, and objects at a distance assume weird, fantastic shapes; beautiful mirages hold out their allurements from all directions; the sombre walls of villages present the appearance of battlemented fortresses rising up from the mirror-like surface of silvery lakes, and orchards and groves seem shadowy, undefinable objects floating motionless above the earth.  The telegraph poles traversing the plain in a long, straight line until lost to view in the hazy distance, appear to be suspended in mid-air; camels, horses, and all moving objects more than a mile away, present the strange optical illusion of animals walking through the air many feet above the surface of the earth.  Long rows of kanaat mounds traverse the plain in every direction, leading from the numerous villages to distant mountain chains.  Descending one of the sloping cavernous entrances before mentioned, for a drink, I am rather surprised at observing numerous fishes disporting themselves in the water, which, on the comparatively level plain, flows but slowly; perhaps they are an eyeless variety similar to those found in the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky; still they get a glimmering light from the numerous perpendicular shafts.  Flocks of wild pigeons also frequent these underground water-courses, and the peasantry sometimes capture them by the hundred with nets placed over the shafts; the kanaats are not bricked archways, but merely tunnels burrowed through the ground.  Three miles of loose sand and stones have to be trundled through before reaching Kasveen; nevertheless my promised sixty miles are overcome, and I enter the city gate at 2 P.M.  A trundle through several narrow, crooked streets brings me to an inner gateway emerging upon a broad, smooth avenue; a short ride down this brings me to a large enclosure containing the custom-house offices and a fine brick caravanserai.  Yet another prince appears here in the person of a custom-house official; I readily grant the requested privilege of seeing me ride, but the title of a Persian prince is no longer associated in my mind with greatness and importance; princes in Persia are as plentiful as counts in Italy or barons in Germany, yet it rather shocks one’s dreams of the splendor of Oriental royalty to find princes manipulating the keys of a one wire telegraph control-station at a salary of about forty dollars a month (25 tomans), or attending to the prosy duties of a small custom-house.  Kasveen is important as being the half-way station between Teheran and the Caspian port of Eesht, and on the highway of travel and commerce between Northern Persia and Europe; added importance is likewise derived from its being the terminus of a broad level road from the capital, and where travellers and the mail from Teheran have to be transferred from wheeled vehicles to the backs