I kept on, never stopping more than the time to saddle. Night came on, and on getting to Rustumabad I was delighted to find the courier asleep, giving his two tired horses a rest. I took two others, also tired ones, and on I went, leaving him peacefully slumbering. We were now in dense forest—it was pitch dark; the horses previously tired by the rapid riding of Colonel S⸺’s party, and the return journey from the long and bad stage of six farsakhs, they having gone before my getting them about forty miles. When I got some ten miles into the forest, the poor beasts refused to move. The guide was, or pretended to be, in great terror of wild beasts, repeating “Jūniver, jūniver!” (“Wild animals!”) to me continually. Of the presence of these there was no mistake, from the continued noises and roarings, though we saw none. There was nothing for it but to dismount. My matches being stolen, I tore out some cotton wool from my quilt, mixed it with a little powder from a broken cartridge, and fired my revolver through it. We soon had an enormous fire. _How_ I enjoyed it and the _rest_! The damp of the swamps—it is as damp here as it is dry in the middle and south of Persia—had seemed to enter my bones; and how I had longed for rest. Now I got a little for the first time, lying on my quilt, my head on my saddle-bags, before an immense fire, which the guide fed with broken trunks and boughs. I enjoyed a sensation of delightful rest I have never felt before or since. I even managed to eat a little soup, and the guide made tea in the tin. How I revelled in it, for I knew I _must catch_ the Colonel by breakfast-time, before he could leave Resht, and consequently not lose the last steamer. I reluctantly left the fire as soon as the horses could move, and we plodded on in the dark. We got to Koodūm before dawn, and into Resht to M. M⸺’s house by nine, where I found the Colonel and his party at breakfast. Thirty-one farsakhs, over long stages and bad roads, in twenty-two hours (one hundred and eight miles), or one hundred and ninety-six miles from Teheran in forty-one hours, was good travelling on tired horses, and for a sick man. Colonel S⸺, who was astounded at seeing me, supposing me four stages beyond Kashan, must, I think, have looked upon me as an impostor. He was very cold indeed. I tried to eat some breakfast, but failed, and left on a bad horse to cross the swamp with the rest of the party for Peri-bazaar. It was some miles through a nasty swampy road, the fine chaussée there now is, not then existing.