HUJJATABAD, THE FIRST STAGE FROM YEZD _To face p._ 6 SWEET EATING IN A TALAR ” 26 DEHBALA ” 34 SMALL SQUARE IN YEZD ” 76 CORPSES _EN ROUTE_ TO THE QUM CEMETERY ” 120 SANDY DESERT NEAR YEZD ” 120 CARRYING THE NAKHL IN THE BIG SQUARE IN YEZD ” 134 SQUARE OUTSIDE GOVERNOR’S RESIDENCE IN YEZD ” 184 A VIEW OF YEZD ” 216 SCENES IN YEZDI LIFE ” 226 THE SCHOOL ” 242 MAP _at the End_ FIVE YEARS IN A PERSIAN TOWN CHAPTER I The Yezd district—Desert—Water supply—Villages—The town of Yezd—Gardens—Streets—Houses—Furniture—Cleanliness—Undurability of buildings—Built for heat—Hill villages—Effect of surroundings on intellect and character. In the very centre of central Persia there is a town called Yezd, which in some ways may be uninteresting, but ought for a student of Persia to have the greatest interest, for it possesses all the regular attributes of a Persian town to an exaggerated degree. These Persian towns can be better understood after some consideration of the country in which they lie. Some one, I think, has said that Persia consists of two parts, the salt desert, and the desert which is not salt; and though this is not true of all parts of Persia, with regard to most of the interior of Persia it is as nearly true as a reasonable man can expect an aphorism to be. In the vast district where Yezd lies you find an archipelago, with sand for sea, and towns and villages for islands. If you want to know how big that desert area is, I can only tell you that we went to Yezd, which lies in the very centre of Persia, from the southern shore of the Caspian, which is the northern boundary of the country, and with the exception of a belt of land at the extreme north about thirty miles broad, and a patch round Teheran about twenty miles across, we literally passed through nothing but desert.