fertile and productive, being well watered by the Sefid Roud (White
River). Rice is largely grown, but to-day not a trace of vegetation is
visible; nothing but the vast white plain, smooth and unbroken, save
where, here and there, a brown village blurrs its smooth surface, an
oasis of mud huts in this desert of dazzling snow.

An exclamation from Gerôme suddenly drew my attention to the
postmaster, who stood at the open doorway, my pelisse in hand. I was
then unused to the ways and customs of the Persian peasantry, or
should have known that it was but labour lost to make one spring at
the old idiot, and, twining my fingers in his throat, shake him till
he yelled for mercy. Nothing but a thick stick has the slightest
effect upon the Shah's subjects; and I was, for a moment, sorely
tempted to use mine. The reader must own that I should have been
justified. It was surely enough to try the patience of a saint, for
the old imbecile had deliberately walked down to the river, made
a hole in the ice, and soaked the garment in water to the waist,
reducing it to its former condition of liquid slime. This was _his_
method of getting the mud off. I may add that this intelligent
official had _assisted me in the drying process up till midnight_.

There was no help for it; nothing to be done but cut off the damaged
portion from the waist to the heels--no easy matter, for it was frozen
as stiff as a board. "It will make a better riding-jacket now," said
Gerôme, consolingly; "but this son of a pig shall not gain by it," he
added, stamping the ruined remains into the now expiring fire.

The village of Patchinar, at the foot of the dreaded Kharzán Pass, was
to be our halting-place for the night. The post-road, after leaving
Rustemabad, leads through the valley of the Sefid Roud river, in