The Turkish consul-general, a corpulent gentleman whose avoirdupois I mentally jot down at four hundred pounds, comes around with several others to see me take a farewell spin on the bricked pavements of the consulate garden. Like all persons of four hundred pounds weight, the Effendi is a good-natured, jocose individual, and causes no end of merriment by pretending to be anxious to take a spin on the bicycle himself, whereas it requires no inconsiderable exertion on his part to waddle from his own residence hard by into the consulate. Three soldiers are detailed from the consulate staff to escort me through the city; en route through the streets the pressure of the rabble forces one unlucky individual into one of the dangerous narrow holes that abound in the streets, up to his neck; the crowd yell with delight at seeing him tumble in, and nobody stops to render him any assistance or to ascertain whether he is seriously hurt.

Soon a poor old ryot on a donkey, happens amid the confusion to cross immediately in front of the bicycle; whack! whack! whack! come the ready staves of the zealous and vigilant soldiers across the shoulders of the offender; the crowd howls with renewed delight at this, and several hilarious hobble-de-hoys endeavor to shove one of their companions in the place vacated by the belabored ryot, in the hope that he likewise will come in for the visitation of the soldiers' o'er- willing staves. The broad suburban road, where the people have been fondly expecting to see the bicycle light out in earnest for Teheran at a marvellous rate of speed, is found to be nothing less than a bed of loose sand and stones, churned up by the narrow hoofs of multitudinous donkeys. Quite a number of better class Persians accompany me some distance further on horseback; when taking their departure, a gentleman on a splendid Arab charger, shakes hands and says: "Good-by, my dear," which apparently is all the English he knows. He has evidently kept his eyes and ears open when happening about the English consulate, and the happy thought striking him at the moment, he repeats, parrot-like, this term of endearment, all unsuspicious of the ridiculousness of its application in the present case.

For several miles the road winds tortuously over a range of low, stony hills, the surface being generally loose and unridable. The water-supply of Tabreez is conducted from these hills by an ancient system of kanaats or underground water-ditches; occasionally one comes to a sloping cavern leading down to the water; on descending to the depth of from twenty to forty feet, a small, rapidly-coursing stream of delicious cold water is found, well rewarding the thirsty traveller for his trouble; sometimes these cavernous openings are simply sloping, bricked archways, provided with steps.

The course of these subterranean water-ways can always be traced their entire length by uniform mounds of earth, piled up at short intervals on the surface; each mound represents the excavations from a perpendicular shaft, at the bottom of which the crystal water can be seen coursing along toward the city; they are merely man-holes for the purpose of readily cleaning out the channel of the kanaat. The water is conducted underground, chiefly to avoid the waste by evaporation and absorption in surface ditches. These kanaats are very extensive affairs in many places; the long rows of surface mounds are visible, stretching for mile after mile across the plain as far as eye can penetrate, or until losing themselves among the foot-hills of some distant mountain chain; they were excavated in the palmy days of the Persian Empire to bring pure mountain streams to the city fountains and to irrigate the thirsty plain; it is in the interest of self-preservation that the Persians now keep them from falling into decay.

At noon, while seated on a grassy knoll discussing the before-mentioned contents of my pockets, I am favored with a free exhibition of what a physical misunderstanding is like among the Persian ryots. Two companies of katir-jees happen to get into an altercation about something, and from words it gradually develops into blows; not blows of the fist, for they know nothing of fisticuffs, but they belabor each other vigorously with their long, thick donkey persuaders, sticks that are anything but small and willowy; it is an amusing spectacle, and seated on the commanding knoll nibbling "drum-sticks" and wish-bones, I can almost fancy myself a Roman of old, eating peanuts and watching a gladiatorial contest in the amphitheatre. The similitude, however, is not at all striking, for thick as are their quarter-staffs the Persian ryots don't punish each other very severely. Whenever one of them works himself up to a fighting-pitch, he commences belaboring one of the others on the back, apparently always striking so that the blow produces a maximum of noise with a minimum of punishment; the person thus attacked never ventures to strike back, but retreats under the blows until his assailant's rage becomes spent and he desists.

Meanwhile the war of words goes merrily forward; perchance in a few minutes the person recently attacked suddenly becomes possessed of a certain amount of rage-inspired courage, and he in turn commences a vigorous assault upon somebody, probably his late assailant; this worthy, having become a little cooler, has mysteriously lost his late pugnacity, and now likewise retreats without once attempting to raise his own stick in self-defence. The lower and commercial class Persians are pretty quarrelsome among themselves, but they quarrel chiefly with their tongues; when they fight without sticks it is an ear-pulling, clothes-tugging, wrestling sort of a scuffle, which continues without greater injury than a torn garment until they become exhausted if pretty evenly matched, or until separated by bystanders; they never, never hurt each other unless they are intoxicated, when they sometimes use their short swords; there is no intoxication, except in private drinking-parties.

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Adapted from Thomas Stevens, Around the World on a Bicycle