lot on the raised mud portion along
the wall, seating myself next to my property. I ordered tea, and the
attendant, with many salaams, explained that his fire had gone out, but
that if I would wait a few minutes he would make me some fresh _chah_. I
consented. He inquired whether the revolver was loaded, and I said it
was. He proceeded to the further end of the room, where, turning his
back to me, he began to blow upon the fire, and I, being very thirsty,
sent another man to my fourgon to bring me a bottle of soda-water. The
imprisoned gases of the soda, which had been lying for the whole day in
the hot sun, had so expanded that when I removed the wire the cork went
off with a loud report and unfortunately hit the man in the shoulder
blade. By association of ideas he made so certain in his mind that it was
the revolver that had gone off that he absolutely collapsed in a
semi-faint, under the belief that he had been badly shot. He moaned and
groaned, trying to reach with his hand what he thought was the wounded
spot, and called for his son as he felt he was about to die. We supported
him, and gave him some water and reassured him, but he had turned as pale
as death.

"What have I done to you that you kill me?" he moaned pitifully.

"But, good man, you have no blood flowing,--look!"

A languid, hopeless glance at the ground, where he had fallen and sure
enough, he could find no blood. He tried to see the wound, but his head
could not revolve to a sufficiently wide arc of a circle to see his
shoulder-blade, so in due haste we removed his coat and waistcoat and
shirt, and after slow, but careful, keen examination, he discovered that
not only there were no marks of flowing blood, but no trace whatever of a
bullet hole in any of his garments. Even then he was not certain, and two
small mirrors were sent for, which, by the aid of a sympathising friend,
he got at proper angles minutely to survey his whole back.

He eventually recovered, and was able to proceed with the brewing of tea,
which he served with terribly trembling hand on the rattling saucer under
the tiny little glass.

"It was a very narrow escape from death, sahib," he said in a wavering
voice--"for it might have been the revolver."

There is nothing like backshish in Persia to heal all wounds, whether
real or otherwise, and he duly received an extra handsome one.

In Persia the traveller is particularly struck by the number of Princes
one encounters on the