hed road, which takes a straight course southeastward from the
city and is seen in the distance ahead, leading over a sloping pass, a
depression in the Doshan Tepe spur of the Elburz range. The road near the
city is now in better condition for wheeling than at any other time of
the year; the daily swarms of pack-animals bringing produce into Teheran
have trodden it smooth and hard during the ten days' continuous fine
weather, while it has not been dry sufficiently long to develop into
dust, as it does later in the season. Our road is level and good for
something over a farsakh, after which comes the rising ground leading
gently upward to the pass. The gradient is sufficiently gentle to be
ridable for some little distance, when it becomes too rocky and steep,
and I have to dismount and trundle to the summit. The summit of the pass
is only about nine miles from the city walls, and we pause a minute to
investigate a bottle of homemade wine from the private cellar of Mr.
North, one of our party, and to allow me to take a farewell glance at
Teheran, and the many familiar objects round about, ere riding down the
eastern slope and out of sight.

Teheran is in semi-obscurity beneath the same hazy veil observed when
first approaching it from the west, and which always seems to hover over
it. This haziness is not sufficiently pronounced to hide any conspicuous
building, and each familiar object in the city is plainly visible from
the commanding summit of the pass. The different gates of the city, each
with its little cluster of bright-tiled minars, trace at a glance the
size and contour of the outer ditch and wall; the large framework of the
pavilion beneath which the Shah gives his annual tazzia (representation
of the religious tragedy of Hussein and Hassan), denuded of its canvas
covering, suggests from this distance the naked ribs of some monster
skeleton. The square towers of the royal anderoon--which the Shah
professes to believe is the tallest dwelling-house in the
world--loom conspicuously skyward above the mass of indefinable mud
buildings and walls that characterize the habitations of humbler folk,
but perhaps happier on the whole than the fair occupants of that
seven-storied gilded prison.

Hundreds of women-wives, concubines, slaves, and domestics are understood
to be dwelling within these palace walls in charge of sable eunuchs, and
the fate of any female whose bump of discretion in an evil moment fails
her, is to be