The New Year’s festival is generally the time of the despatch of the official dresses of honour from the capital. The bearer, and his two or more attendants, generally come on post-horses, and the etiquette is that the recipient goes out to meet the royal gift. The bringer, on arrival at the last stage, is met by the servants or friends of the recipient, who send off to announce the arrival. He now takes off his travel-stained garments, puts on his finery, and starts on horses sent out for him, bearing the royal bounty at his saddle-bow wrapped in a Cashmere shawl. The recipient, accompanied by all his friends and the greater portion of the populace—for the bazaar is closed by order, and a general illumination _commanded_ for the evening; all the shops are visited, and severe fines inflicted on any one disobeying—proceeds to meet the present, and await its arrival. The distance that is gone is regulated by the position of the recipient—the greater the personage, the less distance he goes. One morning the prince sent for me and told me that a kalāat from the Shah would arrive for him the next morning, and that he wished his hakim-bashi and myself to ride out with the magnates of the place, who would accompany him, to meet it. I of course expressed my readiness to attend his Royal Highness, and I was told by the hakim-bashi, who was very jubilant, that probably a decoration would be given to each of us. To have declined would have been to give mortal offence, and to have lost the favour of the Governor of the province, whose partiality secured me against annoyance from the natives of any kind. So the next day I presented myself at nearly noon and found the prince in great feather, the head astrologer having appointed two in the afternoon for the enduing of the dress of honour. Every one was in gala dress, the streets were thronged by a holiday mob in high good humour. And out we all rode. First came four yessaouls, or outriders, with silver maces, showing off their horses by capering in circles; then six running footmen, each with his silver-headed staff and clad in the royal scarlet, in the ancient costume of Persia, and with the strange head-dress somewhat like a fool’s pointed cap—these men are called “shahtirs;” then grooms mounted, leading the handsomest horses of the prince’s stud with gold and jewelled harness and a Cashmere shawl spread over each saddle; then the “mir-achor” (literally, lord of the manger), or master of the horse—a coarse, heavy fellow, the prince’s maternal uncle (his mother, they say, was a peasant girl who struck the king’s eye while washing linen at a village stream)—the mir-achor riding a big and valuable animal; then the prince himself, on a handsome iron-grey, the tail of which is dyed red (a royal custom permitted only to the sons of the king besides the Shah himself), clad in his best—a handsome shawl-coat of great value and trimmed with sable, an under dress of blue satin embroidered in silver,