We ate our mid-day meal in their company, and set off again towards Menjil, following the course of the river--a long stage through burning afternoon sun and the cold chill of dusk, before we reached the Valley of the White River. Menjil has an unhonoured name among Persian villages; it is reputed to be the windiest place in all the Iranian Empire. Morning, noon and night the wind whistles round its mud-houses--that they stand at all must be due only to the constant interposition of Providence in their favour, and even so they stand in a most dilapidated condition. It blows the branches of the olive-trees all to one side, making them look like stunted people breasting the elements, with their hair streaming out behind them; it lashes the swift current of the Sefid Rud until its waters seem to turn backward and beat in waves against the lower side of the bridge piers. By the time we caught sight of the twinkling lights of the village, we felt as though we had traversed every climate the world has to offer, beginning with the frigid zone in the morning, and crossing the equator in the afternoon, to say nothing of a long evening ride through the second circle of the Inferno and the ‘Bufera infernal che mai non resta.’ It was dark as we plashed through the stream which runs between the low houses as you approach Menjil, almost too dark to avoid trampling on the children who were playing along it, and the homeward plodding goats which stepped suddenly out of the night. We knew our way, however, and turned up from the water (not without a curious sensation of surprise at our own intimacy with that small and remote Persian village) into the main street, where the post-house and the telegraph-office stand. The post-house, where we had slept before on our outward journey, was comfortable enough as post-houses go--it was even furnished with some luxury, for it boasted a wooden table and some chairs. There was a Russian family in possession when we arrived, father, mother, and a troop of children, who were making their way down to Enzeli; but they did not discommode us, as they appeared to be content with one room, and resigned the other two to us. They had left Tehran some days before us, but had travelled very slowly, the women and children going at a foot-pace, either slung in covered panniers across the backs of mules, or carried in a box-shaped litter, which, as it crossed hills and valleys, jolted them first on to their feet and then on to their heads in a manner which must have been disturbing to the most equable of temperaments.