Our grooms were at the door ready to take our horses, and we found the dirty little mud room swept, carpeted, a fire lighted, and the entrance curtained with a tent door; the chairs and table had been put out, and the kalians got under weigh. Our servants had tea ready, and we were quite prepared to rest and be thankful. Our books and pipes had been put handy in our bedding, and were laid out for us. Half-an-hour after sunset the groom came to say he was going to feed the horses. We go into the yard, into which our room opens, and find Pierson’s stud of Gods on one side, my two on the other, each tethered by double head-ropes to a mud manger, which is constructed in the wall, and secured by heel-ropes of goats’ hair tied to pins of iron a foot long, firmly driven into the ground. The horses had been carefully dry-rubbed and clothed, the nammads, or felt coverings, drawn over their necks, for it was chilly, and the beds of “pane” laid for them. The Persians use no straw for making beds for their horses, as it is too valuable; but they utilise the dung, which is carefully dried in the sun and then stored, as bedding; this is very dry, clean, and soft, and quite without smell. When thus dried, it is called “pane.” It is laid a foot deep all round the standing of the horse, and the edges carefully smoothed (as a gardener in England smooths his flower-beds) by the grooms. The horses, well aware that it is feeding-time, and having been watered some ten minutes before (they had been walked about for half-an-hour to cool them on arrival—a thing a Persian never omits), now commenced neighing, playfully biting and letting out at each other as far as their heel-ropes would permit. Pierson’s head-groom measured out in handfuls the allowance of barley for each beast, and it was poured into a nosebag filled with “kah,” or chaff, and then affixed to the animal’s head, that not a grain might be lost. When we had seen this done, and noticed that each horse fed well, we left, our place being taken by the head-servant, who stayed till the barley was eaten; for in those days we could not trust our grooms, who would always steal the barley if they could.