on a small gravelly terrace surrounded by quite a small wood of saxaul (1 906 feet).
The time was short for pitching our camp. We had scarcely got everything in order before darkness fell. The
men were in a great hurry in the evening to kill, cut up, and divide the purchased sheep and take a good meal. When at length they had thoroughly satisfied their appetite, and Nevengk, too, had had his portion, they slept soundly and snored around me. A Baluchi, it should be explained, sleeps on each of the four sides of my tent outside, to protect me from thieves and robbers, according to them. We are on a great highroad which, it seems, is not always safe. On the march they carry their guns loaded, and seem not to like to part from them ; while some are also armed with scymetars and have a very martial appearance. They talk together so fast, and in such a lingo, that one can hardly perceive that it is a Persian dialect, but they understand very well my scanty but carefully pronounced high Persian.
The youth Riza amuses me vastly. He behaves irreproachably, and looks both stupid and roguish when he brings in my supper, as if he thought, " The master must be modest if he can put up with this." He can cook a fowl till it becomes rather soft, and eggs till they are hard as stone. I can scarcely restrain myself from laughing when I see Riza in his remarkable costume ; and he does not look more elegant since he has begun to put on his clothes in the wrong way ; first the trousers, then the long white shirt coming down to his knees, and above it the jacket, which is much shorter. He is quite convinced that those who do not wear their shirts over their trousers are wrong.
I wonder what Riza thinks of during the ten long hours he sits swaying on his dromedary. Something or other he thinks of, for when he serves my supper in the evening his eyes look as if he had been weeping. Perhaps he is mourning for the relations and friends he has lost in the plague. Later in the evening, when all the Baluchis are already asleep, he lies by the camp fire and sings a lively air. Joy and sorrow alternate in the mind of a Persian as
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