the
bottom, feeling his way with a long-handled spade; he then returns and
carries the bicycle across on his head, afterward carrying me across
astride his shoulders, landing me safely with nothing worse than wet
feet.

A mile of awful saline mud, and stream number two is reached and crossed
in a similar manner--although here I unfortunately cross part way
over fairly sitting on the water. The water and the weather are both
uncomfortably chilly, and my assistant emerges from the second stream
with chattering teeth and goose-pimply flesh. A liberal and well-deserved
present makes him forget personal discomforts, and, fervently kissing my
hand and pressing my palm to his forehead, he tells me there is no more
water ahead, and, recrossing the stream, he wends his way homeward again.

Fortunately the road improves rapidly, developing beyond the Nishapoor
Valley into smooth, upland camel-trails that afford quite excellent
wheeling. The Nishapoor Valley impresses me as about the finest area of
cultivation seen in Persia, except, perhaps, the Tabreez Plain; and
toward Gadamgah the country gets positively beautiful--at least, beautiful
in comparison. Crystal streamlets come purling and gurgling across the
road over pebbly beds; and, looking northward for their source, one finds
that the usually gray and uninteresting foot-hills have changed into
bright, green slopes, on whose cheerful brows are seen an occasional pine
or cedar. Overtopping these green, grassy slopes are dark, rugged rocks,
and higher still the grim white region of--winter. Somewhere behind
these emerald foot-hills, near Gadamgah, are the famous turquoise mines
alluded to in the "Veiled Prophet of Khorassan." The mines are worked at
the present time, but only in a desultory and unenterprising manner.

Favored with good roads, I succeed in reaching Gadamgah before dark,
where, besides a comfortable and commodious caravanserai, and the
pleasure of seeing around a number of fine-spreading cedars, one can
obtain the rare luxury of pine-wood to build a fire.

Immediately upon my arrival a knowing and respectable-looking old
pilgrim, who calls himself a hadji and a dervish from Mazan-deran,
rescues me from the annoying importunities of the people and invites me
to share the accommodation of his menzil. Augmenting his scanty stock of
firewood and obtaining eggs and bread, quite a comfortable evening is
spent in reclining beside the blazing pine-wood fire, which is i