fire in anticipation of a good
night's rest; but sleep was not for us. In the next room were a party
of Persian merchants from Astrakhan on their way to Bagdad _via_
Teheran, who had been prisoners here for five days, and were now
carousing on the strength of getting away on the morrow. A woman was
with them--a brazen-faced, shrill-voiced Armenian, who made more noise
than all the rest put together. Singing, dancing, quarrelling, and
drinking went on without intermission till long past midnight, our
neighbours raising such a din that the good people of Kharzan, a
quarter of a mile away, must have turned uneasily in their slumbers,
and wondered whether an army of fiends had not broken loose. Towards 1
a.m. the noise ceased, and we were just dropping to sleep, when, at
about half-past two in the morning, our drunken friends, headed by the
lady, burst into our apartment, with the information, in bad Russian,
that a gang of fifty men sent that morning to clear a path through
the deep snow had just returned, and the road to Mazreh was now
practicable. The caravans would be starting in an hour, they
added. "And you'd better travel with them," joined in the lady,
contemptuously, "or you will be sure to get into trouble by
yourselves." A reply more forcible than polite from Gerome then
cleared the apartment; and, rekindling the now expiring embers, we
prepared for the road.

We set out at dawn for the gate of the village, where the caravans
were to assemble. It was still freezing hard, and the narrow streets
like sheets of solid ice, so that our horses kept their legs with
difficulty. We must have numbered fifty or sixty camels, and as many
mules and horses, all heavily laden.

Daybreak disclosed a weird, beautiful scene: a sea of snow, over which
the rising sun threw countless effects of light and colour, from the
cold slate grey immediately around us, gradually lightening to the
faintest tints of rose and gold on the eastern horizon, where stars
were paling in a cloudless sky. Portrayed on canvas, the picture would
have looked unnatural, so brilliant were the hues thrown by the rising
sun over the land-, or rather snow-scape. The cold, though intense,
was not unbearable, for there was fortunately no wind, and the spirits
rose with the crisp, bracing air, brilliant sunshine, and jangle of
caravan bells, as one realized that Teheran was now well within reach,
and the dreaded Kharzan a thing of the past. Gerome gave vent to h