Then you begin to think about your evening meal, and your servant goes off to bargain and wrangle over some unfortunate fowl, the result being that in about an hour's time your dinner is ready, and shortly after you very thankfully retire to rest, hoping for the best. The chappa khanehs, or post-houses, are often a trifle cleaner than the caravanserai. Here the animals are kept for the post, and any one travelling "chappa" is supposed to find fresh relays of horses at each of these places, but very often the number is short, and the poor, wretched, underfed animal has to do duty for a second stage: a "stage" is anything from fifteen to thirty miles. My husband once rode "chappa" from Yezd to Kerman, a distance of 250 miles, in 2 1/2 days, to attend an English doctor who was very ill with typhoid fever. It was very hard and rough riding; the roads were bad, the horses worse, some of the animals being blind, others lame, while the majority of them were so over-worked and badly fed that it seemed impossible that they could ever do the stage. A doctor once riding in this way to visit a European, is said to have arrived at one of these post-houses, and finding no horse, demanded a mule. On this beast he made the next stage, to be told on arrival that there was only a donkey available. Nothing better presenting itself, he accepted this mount, and in time reached the next stage, where he was met with the comforting announcement that the only animal at liberty was a cow! History seems uncertain after this point, so we will draw a veil over it! Sometimes these caravanserais and chappa khanehs are the only signs of life to be seen at the end of a stage. There they stand, alone, surrounded on all hands by vast stretches of desert, and form a landmark for miles around. One such I remember very well, as each time we passed that way it seemed to have become more lonely and desolate. Visible from a distance of 5 farsakhs (18 miles), it made the stage seem very long! The atmosphere is so rarefied that distant objects appear near, and the buildings, which were in reality 15 miles away, looked quite close at hand. In this chappa khaneh we were once guilty of inscribing our names on its already well-filled walls. Some years after a lady was visiting us in Mosul, and told us she had read our names in that far-distant chappa khaneh. It is not a very pleasant sensation to be lost in a desert. Only once did this experience befall us, and then we were glad when it was over.