[Precarious State of Author; Hospitable Reception amongst Persian Slaves] I was no longer able to dismount without assistance; they laid me upon the ground; a fearful fire seemed to burn my entrails; my headache reduced me almost to a state of stupefaction. My pen is too feeble to furnish even a slight sketch of the martyrdom that thirst occasions; I think that no death can be more painful. Although I have found myself able to nerve myself to face all other perils, here I felt quite broken. I thought, indeed, that I had reached the end of my life. Towards midnight we started, I fell asleep, and on awaking in the morning found myself in a mud hut, surrounded by people with long beards; in these I immediately recognised children of 'Iran.' They said to me: 'Shuma ki Hadji nistid' (You, certainly, are no Hadji). I had no strength to reply. They at first gave me something warm to drink, and a little afterwards some sour milk, mixed with water and salt, called here 'Airan:' that gave me strength and set me up again. I now first became aware that I and my other fellow-travellers were the guests of several Persian slaves, who had been sent hither in the middle of the wilderness, at a distance of ten miles from Bokhara, to tend sheep; they had received from their owners only a scanty supply of bread and water, so that they might find it impossible to make such a provision as should help them to flee away through the wilderness. And yet these unfortunate exiles had had the magnanimity to share their store of water with their arch-enemies, {163} the Sunnite Mollahs! To me they showed peculiar kindness, as I addressed them in their mother tongue. Persian, it is true, is spoken also in Bokhara, but the Persian of the Irani is different from the former. I was much touched to see amongst them a child five years old, also a slave, of great intelligence. He had been, two years before, captured and sold with his father. When I questioned him about the latter, he answered me confidingly. 'Yes; my father has bought himself (meaning paid his own ransom); at longest I shall only be a slave two years, for by that time my father will have spared the necessary money.' The poor child had on him hardly anything but a few little rags, to cover his weak little body; his skin was of the hardness and colour of leather. I gave him one of my own articles of attire, and he promised me to have a dress made out of it for himself.