It was here that the Governor paid an official call upon General Byron. He sent a servant to announce his coming, and presently arrived accompanied by a retinue of unkempt, hungry-looking officials, all wearing the chocolate-coloured sugar-loaf hat peculiar to Persians. The Governor himself was a fat, pompous individual, with a drooping moustache, unshaven face, and no collar. We wondered at first whether the stubble on his chin was due to slothfulness, or was a sign of mourning. We discovered it was the latter, a brother of his having died recently through over-participation in food at some local festivity. To look at the portly form of the Governor made it quite evident that everybody was not going hungry in Kirind. As he sat cross-legged on the floor, his fingers interlaced in front of his breast, and twirling his thumbs, he looked exactly what he was--the personification of hopeless incapacity and lethargy. "What ashes are fallen on my head!" he moaned aloud, by way of expressing sorrow for the {88} death of so many of the villagers from starvation. Yet he himself had done nothing to lessen the ravages of famine in the district, and was content to see the wretched inhabitants die, without moving a finger to help them. His attitude was typical of officialdom throughout this starving land. The Governor was a landowner, and probably, like others of his class whom I came across later in Kermanshah and Hamadan, had plenty of grain hidden away waiting for the day when the British Commissariat, in order to feed starving Persians, would come and buy it at inflated prices, thus enriching a gang of hoarding, avaricious rascals. When General Byron spoke of what the British were doing elsewhere in the way of feeding the famine-stricken, the Governor's eyes brightened, and scenting the possibility of an advantageous commercial deal in cornered wheat, he replied with a fervent "Mash-allah!" (Praise be to God!) The suggestion that thieving local bakers who had been profiteering at the expense of the starving population might be taught a salutary lesson by having their ears nailed to their bakehouse doors, or otherwise dealt with under some equally benign Persian enactment, seemed to find favour in the eyes of the Governor, for he answered, "Inshallah!" (Please God!)