ted. The linguistic
educational qualification for the post is evidently confined to Russian,
for on finding that I spoke Persian, the officer asked me for the
information he pretended to seek from the English passports. He
acknowledged the farce he was called upon to play, and we proceeded
without any farther inquiry. The day was warm, but not oppressively so;
the sea-breeze helped the boat across the lagoon and up the Pir-i-Bazaar
stream, and the weather being dry, we reached Resht in carriages By the
Mobarakabad route, without the splashing plunging through a sea of mud
which is the general disagreeable experience of the main road.

The Enzelli Lagoon is a swarming haunt of numerous kinds of wild-fowl
and fishing birds. Conspicuous among the waders in the shallows and on
the shore are the pelican and the stork. The place is a paradise to
them, teeming with fish and frog food. One of my companions described
what he had witnessed in a struggle with a wounded stork in the shallow
water of this lagoon. He and a friend were out after wild-duck, and his
friend, desiring to bag a giant stork, which looked splendid in his
strongly contrasted pure white and deep black plumage, fired, and
wounded the bird. His Persian servant, with thoughts intent on cooking
it, ran, knife in hand, to cut its throat in the orthodox manner, so as
to make it lawful for a Mohammedan to eat. The bird, on being seized,
struggled hard with its captor, and, snapping its elongated bill widely
in wild terror, by accident got the man's head jammed between its
mandibles. The keen cutting edges of the long strong beak scarified the
man's cheeks, and made him scream with pain and with frantic fear that
it was _his_ throat which was being cut. His master went to his
assistance and released him by wrenching open the stork's bill, but he
was so occupied with supporting his swooning servant that time was given
for the wounded stork to hurry away in safety, flapping its long wings
and snapping its powerful beak, as is the habit of this voiceless bird,
with all the appearance of triumph.

Enzelli is becoming the port of entry, for the North of Persia, of tea
from India and China. Till within a very short time most of the tea for
Persia, Trans-Caspia, and Russian Turkistan so far as Samarkand, passed
up from Bombay by the Persian Gulf ports. The late reduction in Russian
railway charges, and the low sea-freights from the East in the
oil-steamers returning to Bato