ed on the bare soles of the feet. When
an option is left to the prisoner of undergoing the bastinado or paying a
fine, he generally selects the sticks, which he feels much less than the
anguish of disbursing the smallest sum in cash. Minor crimes only are so
punished--it is considered the lightest punishment. Occasionally it is
used to obtain confessions. People are seldom known to die under it.

Disfigurement, or deprivation of essential limbs, such as one or more
phalanges of fingers, or the ears or nose, is also much in vogue for
thieves, house-breakers and highwaymen. For second offences of criminals
so branded the whole hand or foot is cut off. Blinding, or rather,
atrophizing the eyes by the application of a hot iron in front, but not
touching them, such as is common all over Central Asia, is occasionally
resorted to in the less civilised parts of Persia, but is not frequent
now. I only saw one case of a man who had been so punished, but many are
those who have the tendons of arms and legs cut--a favourite punishment
which gives the most dreadfully painful appearance to those who have
undergone it.

Imprisonment is considered too expensive for the Government, and is
generally avoided except in the bigger cities. The prisoners have a very
poor time of it, a number of them being chained close together.

To burn people or to bury them alive are severe punishments which are
very seldom heard of now-a-days, but which occasionally take place in
some remote districts and unknown to his Majesty the Shah, who has ever
shown a tender heart and has done all in his power to suppress barbarous
ways in his country; but cases or crucifixion and stoning to death have
been known to have occurred not many years ago--if not as a direct
punishment from officials, yet with their indirect sanction.

Strangling and decapitation are still in use, and I am told--but cannot
guarantee its accuracy--that blowing criminals from guns is rarely
practised now, although at one time this was a favourite Persian way of
disposing of violent criminals.

A Persian official was telling me that, since these terrible punishments
have been to a great extent abolished, crimes are more frequent in Persia
than they were before. The same man--a very enlightened person, who had
travelled in Europe--also remarked to me that had we to-day similar
punishments in Europe instead of keeping criminals on the fat of the
land--(I am only repeating his words)--we sh