Passing to the merchant class the opium trade affords a good instance of the most barefaced type of wholesale fraud. Indeed, the fraud of a Persian town is beyond conception. We had a neighbour in Yezd who was considered a fairly respectable man, and whose sole business was the forging of seals. But the fact is that every class, from the highest to the lowest, is thoroughly permeated by the leaven of dishonesty. There is so little security for property in Persia that men do not consider it worth their while to amass wealth by ordinary means. Everybody in a town like Yezd is trying to effect a _coup_, either a big one or a small one, and one of the results is the most extraordinarily rapid shifting of social positions. In Persia the road from beggary to princedom is a very short one, and the road from princedom to beggary is not very lengthy; only in this return journey it is somewhat difficult to prevent being assassinated, for when a big man is disgraced his life is in extreme danger. This inattention to ordinary and petty business enterprise has curious results. When I first went to Yezd I found it almost an impossibility to get the things I wanted from the bazaars. The European has to deal with the bazaar through his servants, and it took my men about three days to get the commonest articles other than necessary provisions. Articles which I knew would need a little hunting for were sometimes, if I insisted, procured within the month. This is absolutely without exaggeration; and, although I believe I was unfortunate, other residents and travellers in Persia have confessed to similar difficulties. You may go into a town where the chief occupation is weaving, and declare that you want some of the woven articles which it is their principal business to make, and it is very possible that you may be unable to procure them, or only able to get the most inferior specimens, if you are passing through quickly. This is rather less true of the larger places on the main roads, like Tehran and Isfahan, but in towns like Yezd there is the greatest difficulty in getting what you want.