ed enclosure.

At 6.30 p.m. we entered the small town of Barawamad
(Bahramabad)--altitude 5,150 feet--or Rafsenju as it is called now by its
new name. This is a fast-growing place of quite modern origin, and it
owes most of its prosperity to the extensive cultivation of cotton,
exported from here direct to the Persian Gulf and India.

Besides the route on which we are travelling there are several other
tracks leading out of Barawamad. A minor one runs in a north-easterly
direction, over the Dehring Mountains to the Seroenan district, where
many villages are to be found, and then turns sharply south-east _via_
Zerend to Kerman. It is also possible, when once one has crossed into
Seroenan, to continue to Lawah (Rawar) and then, across the Salt Desert,
to Meshed or to Birjand.

To the Persian Gulf there are three tracks. One south-west by west to
Sher-i-balek, from which place the traveller has the option to travel to
Bushire (_via_ Shiraz) or to Lingah or to Bandar Abbas _via_ Forg. Two
different tracks, to Reshitabad and Bidu, join at Melekabad (south-west)
and these eventually enter the Kerman-Shiraz-Bushire track; while another
track, the most in use, goes almost due south, direct to Bidu, skirting
the Pariz Mountains on their westerly slopes. This track, too, crosses
the Kerman-Shiraz route at Saidabad, and proceeds due south to Bandar
Abbas.

The few Hindoo merchants of Kerman come here during the cotton season to
make their purchases and send their goods direct to Bandar Abbas for
shipment to India. Pottery of an inferior kind is manufactured at
Rafsenju.

We left the Chappar khana at midnight in a terrific cold wind, and this
time on shockingly bad horses. They were tired and lame, the cold wind
probably intensifying the rheumatic pains from which most of them were
suffering. The country was undulating and we gradually rose to 5,700
feet. The horses gave us no end of trouble and we had to walk the greater
portion of the night.

Sadek, five feet two in height, and the Chappar boy, six feet two, came
to words and soon after to most sonorous blows. To add to our comfort,
the Chappar boy, who got the worst of the scrimmage, ran away, and it was
only at sunrise that we perceived him again a long way off following us,
not daring to get too near. Eventually, by dint of sending him peaceful
messages by a caravan man who passed us, Sadek induced him to return, and
still struggling in the sand of the desolate country