ate and do not compare
with the delicate flavour of the Italian or Spanish grapes.

Somewhat incongruous and out-of-place, yet more numerous than truly
Persian shops, are the semi-European stores, with cheap glass windows
displaying inside highly dangerous-looking kerosene lamps, badly put
together tin goods, soiled enamel tumblers and plates, silvered glass
balls for ceiling decoration, and the vilest oleographs that the human
mind can devise, only matched by the vileness of the frames. Small
looking-glasses play an important part in these displays, and
occasionally a hand sewing-machine. Tinned provisions, wine and liquor
shops are numerous, but unfortunate is the man who may have to depend
upon them for his food. The goods are the remnants of the oldest stocks
that have gradually drifted, unsold, down to Baku, and have eventually
been shipped over for the Persian market where people do not know any
better. Resht is the chief city in the Ghilan province.

Ghilan's trade in piece-goods is about two-thirds in the hands of Russia,
while one-third (or even less) is still retained by England,--Manchester
goods. This cannot well be helped, for there is no direct route from
Great Britain to Resht, and all British goods must come through Bagdad,
Tabriz, or Baku. The two first routes carry most of the trade, which
consists principally of shirtings, prints, cambrics, mulls, nainsooks,
and Turkey-reds, which are usually put down as of Turkish origin, whereas
in reality they come from Manchester, and are merely re-exported, mainly
from Constantinople, by native firms either in direct traffic or in
exchange for goods received.

One has heard a great deal of the enormous increase in trade in Persia
during the last couple of years or so. The increase has not been in the
trade itself, but in the collection of Customs dues, which is now done in
a regular and business like fashion by competent Belgian officials,
instead of by natives, to whom the various collecting stations were
formerly farmed out.

It will not be very easy for the British trader to compete successfully
with the Russian in northern Persia, for that country, being
geographically in such close proximity, can transport her cheaply made
goods at a very low cost into Iran. Also the Russian Government allows
enormous advantages to her own traders with Persia in order to secure the
Persian market, and to develop her fast-increasing industrial
progress,--advantages which