The vast empty deserts which surround Yezd, and the huge mountain ridges which form the horizon are to the Yezdi by no means empty. It is an axiom of science that Nature abhors a vacuum, and it is a corresponding psychological law that the human imagination cannot tolerate absolute emptiness. So the Yezdi, like the Arabian, peoples his deserts with _jins_ and _dīvs_ and devils, and wherever there is a space not filled in he imagines strange forms of animal life. At the risk of being considered superstitious myself I must own that I should like to see some of the travellers’ tales of Persia more carefully investigated, particularly those relating to the existence of very large lizards which are dangerous to human life. One is familiar with the defences that are being constantly brought forward for the fable of the sea-serpent; how that the sea is after all an almost unknown waste, only crossed in a very few places by well established water-roads that can be most easily avoided; and although the desert cannot be said to afford as much cover as the ocean, for it is not possible to plunge below the surface at any point at any time, still its vast expanses are almost as untraversed and unknown as the ocean wastes, and there are not a few places, especially in the mountains, honeycombed with caves and clefts. This however is a digression. In such a country as I have described, with its vast and barren solitudes, it would be difficult for a people to exist and maintain their reason, if they did not believe in something corresponding to the _jins_ and _divs_. Consequently we find _jins_ in the keyholes, _jins_ in the _qan’ats_, _divs_ in the mountains, _divs_ in the rocks, anywhere, everywhere, a vast population filling up the huge interstices left by Nature. Most of this population is malevolent; so naturally the ordinary Persian is a mass of charms: nobody goes about without cold iron in his pocket, and a large number of people wear either the sacred book in its entirety, or large portions of it somewhere about their person. Also they are terribly afraid of the evil eye; and numbers of their charms, especially for the children, are directed against it. It is not that they think the evil eye common: any Persian will tell you that very few people have it, but they all know of at least one case, and they are terribly afraid of it, sometimes refusing to admit strangers to their house until they are satisfied they have not got it. If a mother sees a dead body before the birth of her child, then, unless she takes the precaution of placing some salt on the corpse, and afterwards putting a little of it in the child’s eye, her child will inevitably have the evil eye, and everything that is pleasing to its eye will be cursed. The evil eye is likely to kill children of tender years, so very young children are always hidden under the _chādar_ when carried in the street.