Next morning I was engaged in a little tailoring. My overcoat was getting too warm, or rather, the weather was getting too warm for the coat, and I had no other garment sufficiently long to be dignified, save a thin corded dressing-gown. Perforce I adapted this. I took off the abundant braiding, removed the waist-cord and sewed on some buttons, and produced a garment thereafter called a “labbada” or long coat, such as religious students and Azarbaijan merchants wear. I was sewing on the last button, when a knock came at the door, and the servant of the Persian Consul stood there bowing, “Would I come and see the Persian Consul on a friendly visit? He was in the caravanserai and very anxious to make my acquaintance.” So donning my new garment, I followed him along the gallery. I found him in a room over the gateway, seated at the upper end upon a small carpet. Below him, that is, against the long side wall and nearer the door, was a collection of varied Kurds, of Sauj Bulaq, Sina, Merivan, and other Persian towns. Their head-dress of handkerchiefs indicated their origin. Standing up near the consul was an elderly, thick-set man, bushy-bearded, wearing the baggy trousers and shirt tucked in, that are typical of the muleteers of the Persian border, but his pointed cap proclaimed him a Mukri. The room was partly taken up with three tables, upon which stood basins and copper vessels containing various concoctions. A tray covered with small sweetmeats, just cooked, stood by an earthen oven in a corner; and a young man was engaged in placing therein a fresh tray full of uncooked confections. Sugar loaves lined the walls, hanging by nails, and a smaller table near the window was covered with bottles of colouring matter and the apparatus of a sweet-maker’s trade. Amid all this the consul sat, a grey, fierce-looking man, in Kurdish dress, but he wore upon his head the felt hat and narrow handkerchief of the Kermanshah Kurd. To this assembly I entered, walking delicately to avoid numerous obstacles on the floor, and all rose, answering my “Salamum ’alaikum” with a sonorous “alaikum as salam,” to which the bearded man added the “wa rahmatullah wa barikatah.” The consul made place for me by his side, and in excellent Persian replied to my compliments. The assorted Kurds, who understood very little, began a discussion about some tribal feud somewhere, and left us to a conversation in which the bearded man, who turned out to be the proprietor of the sweet business, and a Persian subject of Sauj Bulaq, joined. This old fellow, Haji Rasul, was a darvish of a sect of the Shi’a Muhammadans.