WHEN we saw the post-house of Mazreh, where we rejoined our missing baggage, we rejoiced that not under its roof, but under the hospitable roof of Hadgi Abdullah, we had taken shelter through the windy night. It was more than common dirty: the mud floors were littered with eggshells and with nameless horrors, which spoke of a yet more uneasy lodging than that of the previous evening. It stood some little way from the village of Mazreh, which lay on the lower slopes of the mountains, and beyond it our path turned upwards and was lost in the mist that hid the top of the pass. In a year or two this bridle-path across the hills will have joined the long roll of things that were; no more will travellers entering Persia climb the narrow track which was the Shah’s highway; no more will their horses’ feet slip among pools of mud and ring out against the solid rock; the Russian Government have taken the highroad to Tehran into their hands, and are even now constructing a broad carriage-way from the Caspian to join the Persian road at Kasvin. But the bridle-path, which had served generations of travellers before us, had a charm of its own, too--the charm of all such tracks which lead you, as it were, through the very heart of a country as uncivilized as when the waters first retreated from the hill-tops. A foot on either side of you the mountains rise in steep slopes and walls of rock, or fall into deep valleys and precipices. The narrow way seems to vanish into wilderness as you pass over it, but when you look ahead you see it running between Scylla and Charybdis, clear and secure. The post-horses of Mazreh matched the accommodation it offered. We spent an hour listening to Ali Akbar condemning the father of the postmaster to eternal fire, and at the end found ourselves provided with sorry beasts, the merest apologies for horses, to which animals they bore but a blurred resemblance. A few hundred yards up the hill, however, we met a man driving some laden beasts, and cajoled him so successfully that he consented to exchange baggage-horses with us, whereupon we went gaily onwards, leaving him to his fate. In all probability he is still toiling towards Kasvin, with his own goods and the skins of our horses upon his shoulders. Our path breasted the hillside boldly, and we were presently buried in a cold mist, which seemed to us all the colder after the dust and heat of the last two days in the plain. The mist lay thickly round us at the top of the pass; we pushed on at a good pace until we caught sight of a solitary tree which grows just above the hollow, where, somewhat sheltered from winter winds and snows, lies the village of Kharzan, a tiny citadel girt round with mud walls. Only half the stage was done, but we stopped at the caravanserai to breathe our horses after the long pull.