xhorting a crowd of interested
listeners at one end of the court-yard, and a strolling band of lutis are
entertaining an audience at the other end. There are six of these lutis;
while two are performing, four are circulating among the crowd collecting
money. In any other country but Persia, five would have been playing and
one passing the hat.

E------and Abdul go ahead to try and secure better
quarters, and shortly the latter returns, and announces that they have
been successful. So I, and the charvadars, with the horses, follow him
through a crooked street of thatched houses, at the end of which we find
R------seated beneath the veranda of a rude hotel kept by
an Armenian Jew. As we approach I observe that my companion looks happier
than I have seen him look for days. He is pretty thoroughly disgusted
with Persia and everything in it, and this, together with his fever, has
kept him in anything but an amiable frame of mind. But now his face is
actually illumined with a smile.

On the little table before him stand a half-dozen black bottles, imperial
pints, bearing labels inscribed with outlandish Russian words.

"This is civilization, my boy--civilization reached at last," says
E------, as he sees me coming.

"What, this wretched tumble-down hole." I exclaim, waving my hand at the
village.

"No, not that," replies E------; "this--this is civilization," and he
holds up to the light a glass of amber Russian beer.

Apart from Russians, we are the first European travellers that have
touched at Bunder Guz since McGregor was here in 1875. We keep a loose
eye out for the gimlet-tailed flies, but are not harassed by them half so
much as by fleas and the omnipresent mosquito. These two latter insects
have dwindled somewhat from the majestic proportions described by
McGregor; they are large enough and enterprising enough as it is; but
McGregor found one species the size of "cats," and the other "as large as
camels." Bunder Guz is simply a landing and shipping point for Asterabad
and adjacent territory. A good deal of Russian bar iron, petroleum, iron
kettles, etc., are piled up under rude sheds; and wool from the interior
is being baled by Persian Jews, naked to the waist, by means of
hand-presses. Cotton and wool are the chief exports. Of course, the whole
of the trade is in the hands of the Russians, who have driven the
Persians quite off the sea. The Caspian is now nothing more nor less than
a Russian salt-water lake.