142 JOURNEYS IN PERSIA LETTER xxii

slept himself, and it was eight the next day before I got
away, taking Mirza with me.

The heat culminated on that day. Since then, having
attained a higher altitude, it has diminished.1 The road
to Jamilabad ascends pretty steadily through undulating
country with small valleys among low hills, but with
hardly any villages, owing to the paucity of water. The
fever still continuing, I found it difficult to bear the
movement of the horse, and dismounted two or three
times and lay under an umbrella by the roadside.
On one of these halts I heard Mirza's voice saying in
cheerful tones, " Madam, your horse is gone !" " Gone !"
I exclaimed, " I told you always to hold or tether him."
" I trusted him," he replied sententiously. " Never trust
any one or any horse, and least of all yourself," I replied
unadvisedly. I sent him back with his horse to look for
Boy, telling him when he saw him to dismount and go
towards him with the nose-bag, and that though the
horse would approach it and throw up his heels and trot
away at first, h& would eventually come near enough to
be caught. After half an hour he came back without
him. I asked him what he had done. He said he saw
Boy, rode near him twice, did not dismount, held out to
him not the nose-bag with barley but my "courier lag"
and that Boy cantered out of sight! For the moment
I shared Aziz Khan's contempt for the " desk-bred " man.

Mirza is so good that one cannot be angry with him,
but it was very annoying to hear him preach about " fate "
and " destiny " while he was allowing his horse to grind my
one pair of smoked spectacles into bits under his hoofs.
I only tcid him that it would be time to fall back on fate

1 North of Daulatabad, the route of last winter from Nanej to Kftm,
the winter route from Kangawar to Tihran, was crossed. Although it is
a ""beaten track" for caravans, so far as I know the only information
concerning it consists in two reports, not accessible to the public, in the
possession of the Indian authorities.