not large, and is almost filled up when he comes on a visit. After he has been given a piece of bread he backs out again and goes away to graze. [Illustration: PLATE V. THE AUTHOR'S RIDING CAMEL, WITH GULAM HUSSEIN.] The ring of bells is continually in my ears. The large bells beat in time with the steps of the camels. Their strides are long and slow, and a caravan seldom travels more than twenty miles in a day. Our road runs south-eastwards. We have soon left behind us the districts at the foot of the Elburz Mountains, where irrigation canals from rivers are able to produce beautiful gardens and fruitful fields. The farther we proceed the smaller and more scattered are the villages. Only along their canals is the soil clothed with verdure, and we have scarcely left a village before we are out on the greyish-yellow desert, where withered steppe shrubs stand at wide intervals apart. Less and less frequently do we meet trains of asses bound for Teheran with great bundles of shrubs and bushes from the steppe to be used as fuel. The animals are small and miserable, and are nearly hidden by their loads. Their nostrils are cruelly pierced, so that they may be made to go quicker and keep up longer. They look sleepy and dejected, these small, obstinate donkeys which never move out of the way. Their long ears flap backwards and forwards, and their under-lips hang down like bags. At the very last village on the edge of the desert we stay two days to prepare ourselves for the dangers ahead of us. The headman of the village owns ten camels, which he will gladly hire us for a few days; they are to carry trusses of straw and water in leathern bags. Our own camels are already fully laden, and the hired camels are only to give us a start. When they turn back we shall have to shift for ourselves. After we have left this village not a sign of life is visible. Before us to the south-east small isolated hills stand up like islands in the sea, and beyond them the horizon of the desert lies as level as that of the ocean. Through this great sandy waste the caravans travel from oasis to oasis, but in the north there is a tract, called the Kevir, within which not the smallest oasis can be found. Not a clump of grass, not even a blade, is to be seen, for the desert is saturated with salt, and when it rains in winter the briny clay becomes as slippery as ice. And this is precisely the place we are making for.