eow." The yowl of a Beerjand cat is several degrees more soul-harrowing
than anything inflicted by midnight prowlers upon the Occidental world,
and I learn afterward that they not infrequently keep it up in the
daytime.

An early start, sixteen miles of road without hills or mountains, but
embracing the several qualities of good, bad, and indifferent, and at
eight o'clock I dismount in the presence of a little knot of
Heshmet-i-Molk's retainers congregated outside his summer-garden, and a
goodly share of the population of the adjacent village of Ali-abad. While
yet miles away, Ali-abad is easily distinguished as being something out
of the ordinary run of Persian villages by the luxuriant foliage of the
Ameer's garden. The whole country around is of the same desert-like
character that distinguishes well-nigh all this country, and the dark,
leafy grove of trees standing alone on the gray camel-thorn plain,
derives additional beauty and interest from the contrast.

The village of Ali-abad, consisting of the merest cluster of low mud
hovels and a few stony acres wrested from the desert by means of
irrigation, the people ragged, dirty, and uncivilized, looks anything but
an appropriate dwelling-place for a great chieftain. The summer garden
itself is enclosed within a high mud wall, and it is only after passing
through the gate and shutting out the rude hovels, the rag-bedecked
villagers, and the barren desert, that the illusion of unfitness is
removed.

My letter is taken in to the Ameer, and in a few minutes is answered in a
most practical manner by the appearance of men carrying carpets,
tent-poles, and a round tent of blue and white stripes. Winding its
silvery course to the summer garden, from a range of hills several miles
distant, is a clear, cold stream; although so narrow as to be easily
jumped, and nowhere more than knee-deep, the presence of trout betrays
the fact that it never runs dry.

The tent is pitched on the banks of this bright little stream, the
entrance but a half-dozen paces from its sparkling water, and a couple of
guards are stationed near by to keep away intrusive villagers; an
abundance of eatables, including sweetmeats, bowls of sherbet, and dried
apricots, and pears from Foorg, are provided at once.

A neatly dressed attendant squats himself down on the shady side of the
tent outside, and at ridiculously short intervals brings me in a newly
primed kalian and a samovar of tea. Everything possi