ned a tunnel is pierced, mostly with the hands
and a small shovel, in a horizontal direction, and seldom less than four
feet high, two feet wide, just big enough to let the workman through.
Then another shaft has to be made for ventilation's sake and to raise to
the surface the displaced earth. Miles of these _kanats_ are thus bored,
with air shafts every ten to twenty feet distant. In many places one sees
thirty, forty, fifty parallel long lines of these aqueducts, with several
thousand shafts, dotting the surface of the ground.

Near ancient towns and villages one finds a great many of these _kanats_
dry and disused at present, and nearly everywhere one sees people at work
making fresh ones, for how to get water is one of the great and serious
questions in the land of Iran. Near Kasvin these _kanats_ are
innumerable, and the water carried by them goes through the streets of
the city, with holes here and there in the middle of the road to draw it
up. These holes are a serious danger to any one given to walking about
without looking where he is placing his feet. It is mainly due to these
artificial water-tunnels that the plain of Kasvin, otherwise arid and
oppressively hot, has been rendered extremely fertile.

There are a great many gardens with plenty of fruit-trees. Vineyards
abound, producing excellent stoneless grapes, which, when dried, are
mostly exported to Russia. Pomegranates, water-melons, cucumbers, and
cotton are also grown. Excellent horses and camels are bred here.

Kasvin being the half-way house, as it were, between Resht and Teheran,
and an important city in itself, is bound--even if only in a reflected
manner--to feel the good effects of having through communication to the
Caspian and the capital made so easy by the completion of the Russian
road.

The silk and rice export trade for Bagdad has gone up during the last two
years, and in the fertile plain in which Kasvin lies agriculture is
beginning to look up again, although not quite so much as in the Resht
district, which is naturally the first to reap benefit from the
development of Northern Persia.

The chief manufactures of Kasvin are carpets, a kind of coarse
cotton-cloth called _kerbas_, velvet, brocades, iron-ware and
sword-blades, which are much appreciated by Persians.

There is a large bazaar in which many cheap European goods are sold
besides the more picturesque articles of local manufacture.

From a strategical point of view, Kasvi