The population of the place are found occupying their housetops, and
whatever points of vantage they can climb to, awaiting my appearance,
their curiosity having been wrought to the highest pitch by their
informant's highly exaggerated accounts of what they might expect to see.
The prevailing color of the female costume is bright red, and the swarms
of these gayly-dressed people congregated on the housetops, and mingled
promiscuously with the dark gray of the mud walls and domes, makes a
picture long to be remembered.

And long also to be remembered is the reception awaiting me inside the
caravanserai yard--the surging, pushing, struggling, shouting mob, among
whom I notice, with some wonderment and speculation, a far larger
proportion of blue-eyed people than I have hitherto seen in Persia. Upon
inquiry it is learned that Abbasabad is a colony of Georgians, planted
and subsidized here by Shah Abbas the Great, as a check on the Turkomans,
whose frequent alamans rendered the roads hereabout well-nigh impassable
for caravans. These warlike mountaineers were brought from the Caucasus
and colonized here, with lands, exemption from taxes, and given an annual
subsidy. They were found to be of good service as a check on the
Turkomans, but were not much of an improvement upon the Turkomans
themselves in many respects. As seen in the caravanserai to-day, they
seem a turbulent, headstrong crowd of people, accustomed to be petted,
and to do pretty much as they please.

At the caravanserai is a traveller who says he hails from the Pishin
Valley, and he produces a certificate in English, recommending him as a
stone mason. The certificate settles all doubts of his being from India,
for were one to meet an Hindostani in the classic shades of purgatory
itself, he would immediately produce a certificate recommending him for
something or other. As the crowd surge and struggle for some position
around me where they can enjoy the exquisite delight of seeing me sip
tiny glasses of scalding hot tea, prepared by the enterprising individual
who met me two miles out, the Pishin Valley man tries to look amused at
them, and to rise superior to the situation, as becomes a person to whom
a Sahib, and whatever wonderful things he may possess, are nothing
extraordinary. The crowd seem very loath to let such an extraordinary
thing as the bicycle and its rider depart from among them so soon,
although at the same time anxious to see me speed along the