As we waited, suddenly the daystar flashed up over the mountains, a brilliant herald summoning the world to wake. The people on the house-tops lifted their heads, and saw that the night was past. As we rode down the village street they were rising and rolling up their beds, and by the time we reached the valley they were breakfasting on their doorsteps, and the glory of the star had faded in the white dawn. In some meadows watered by the mountain streams a family of nomads had already struck camp, and were starting out on their day’s journey; the narrow path over the hills--at best little more than a steep staircase of rock--was blocked by trains of mules laden with coal (black stone, explained our servants); the air rang with the cries of the mule-drivers, and as we rode upwards in cold shadow, the sun struck the mountain-tops, and turned them into solid gold. Day is swift-footed in the East, and man early abroad. Half-way up the pass we paused to look back at our last night’s resting-place, but a shoulder of rock hid the palace, and we carried away with us only an impression of the mysterious beauty of its moonlit courts and gardens. Autumn had come and had almost passed before we found ourselves a second time the guests of the Shah, and under his roof we spent our last two nights in Persia--the one willingly, the other unwillingly. This other palace stood in the midst of a grove of orange-trees; the waters of the Caspian lapped round its walls, and before its balconies stretched the densely-wooded hills of Ghilan. The Russian steamer which was to take us to Baku (for no Persian flag may float on the inland sea) touched at Enzeli early in the morning to pick up passengers, and we had been advised to pass the night there, so that we might be ready betimes. Accordingly, we had driven through the damp flat country, a tangled mass of vegetation, that lies between Resht and the sea, we had been rowed by half-naked sailors up the long canal and across the lagoons, and in the evening we had reached the peninsula on which the village stands. We were conducted at once to the palace, and, passing down moss-grown garden paths, bordered by zinnias and some belated China roses, we came upon a two-storied house, with deep verandas, and a red-tiled roof rising above the orange-trees. At the top of the staircase we found ourselves in an endless succession of rooms, most of them quite tiny, with windows opening on to the veranda--all unpeopled, all desolate. We chose our suite of apartments, and proceeded to establish ourselves by setting up our beds and dragging a wooden table into our dining-room. Next door to us Ali Akbar had organized his kitchen, and we sat hungrily waiting while he roasted a chicken and heated some boiled rice for our supper. Presently a shadow darkened our doorway, and from the veranda there entered a Persian general dressed in shabby uniform, with some inferior order on