This Governor, who had so suddenly developed a keen interest in the local food problem, was afterwards present at a full-dress parade of Miss Cowden's {89} starvelings. The recipients of mission charity were of both sexes, and varied from toddlers of three to their elders of ten or twelve years. All they had in the way of clothing was a piece of discoloured rag, or a section of a tattered gunny bag, fastened round the loins. Physical suffering long endured was indelibly stamped on their shrunken features and on their emaciated frames. Each was given a substantial chunk of freshly baked chipattee, or unleavened bread, and they were desired to eat it then and there to prevent its being pilfered from their feeble hands by hungry adult prowlers outside the mission buildings. They made no demur, and ate ravenously. Bread is the staple diet, and generally the only article of food, of the Persian poor; and this daily free distribution must have been the means of preserving the lives of many hundreds of Kirind children. Charity in the Anglo-Saxon meaning of the word seems to find no home in the breast of the average Persian; and each day there was a fight between local cupidity, as represented by the Kirind bakers, and foreign generosity as exemplified by the American Mission, which was spending its funds freely in order that these unhappy children of an alien race might have bread and live. Here, as elsewhere during my wanderings through Iran, I was painfully impressed by the appalling callousness and indifference exhibited by the ordinary Persian towards the sufferings of his own people. He would not lift a hand to help a dying man, and dead, would leave {90} him to the tender mercies of the dogs and vultures rather than trouble to give him burial. One morning, while preparing for a further move eastward towards Kermanshah, a wireless message, transmitted in haste from Surkhidizeh, ordered us to sit tight and await developments and reinforcements. We were warned that the Senjabis were restless, and might any night swoop down on our slenderly-garrisoned post. Ali Akhbar Khan, who was the Pendragon of the Senjabis and various stray allied bands of nomadic robbers in these parts, was said to be watching us from his eyrie up in the snow-capped hills. His martial ardour had been stimulated to the verge of action by German gold and German rifles, and the promise of much loot when our weak force had been duly annihilated. To the careful, calculating Akhbar, and to the wild tribesmen who had flocked to his standard at the very first mention of the word "unlimited loot," the capture of the Kirind post must have seemed the softest of soft things. To look our way and resist temptation was like flying in the face of Providence. How that dear old bandit's mouth must have watered in anticipation of securing a fine haul of rifles, ammunition, and transport animals!