On May 29th, having previously exchanged adieux with our kindly host, we set out from Karasf. The weather was now oppressively hot, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to march during the noon-day heat. We accordingly moved off earlier, and usually contrived to take the road about sunrise daily, halted at noon for an hour or so, and then on again, finishing the day's march early in the afternoon in the welcome shade of some garden on the outskirts of a village and close to a good water-supply. A day's trek from Karasf took us beyond the confines of the Amir's territory. Couriers whom he had despatched in advance of us warned his local headmen of our coming, and we lacked nothing in the way of supplies. We crossed rough, broken country, wound over mountain passes, and down into pleasant valleys beyond. Our advent, it was clear, caused much excitement in the countryside, but the people, while they sometimes held aloof, were never unfriendly. We were passing through a country less {148} ravaged by starvation than the region close to Hamadan. Food was more plentiful, and the "hunger battalion," with its suffering members, was not to be seen in the Persian North-West. We were also gradually losing touch with Persian as a spoken language. It was being supplanted by Turki, the dialect of Turkish-Persian spoken by the peasant classes in the province of Azarbaijan. As we rode north we were sensible of this linguistic change. First the peasants we met in the village spoke Persian and understood Turki; farther north Persian was understood, but not spoken with any fluency; until, north and north-west of Zinjan, Turki entirely ousts the native Persian, the latter as a spoken language in many cases being quite unknown to the villagers. So far we had seen nothing of any hostile Turks. A body of their cavalry and a few infantry were reported to be at Zinjan, but the villagers told us they had not come farther south, or anywhere in the neighbourhood of our own line of march. A few robber bands occasionally quitted their mountain lairs and descended into the plain, taking us for some peaceful merchant caravan, probably unarmed, and therefore an easy prey for these wild freebooters of the hills. But, on reconnoitring closer and discovering their mistake, they did not tarry, and turning about, went off into the hills as fast as their wiry ponies could carry them. {149}