198 JOURNEYS IN PERSIA LETTER xxv

Among the most prominent objects are horse, mule, and
ass shoes; pack-saddles, Wmrjins, rope, and leather.
Fruiterers abound, and melons are piled up to the roofs.
Eussian cottons and Austrian lamps and mirrors repeat
themselves down the long uncouth alley.

The camping-ground is outside the town, a windy and
dusty plain. Here my eight guards left me, but the
-Jcetchuda shortly called with a message from the Sartyp
commanding a detachment of soldiers and the town,
saying that a military guard would be sent before sunset.
Sain Kala is in the government of Sujbulak, and its
people are chiefly Kurds with an admixture of Turks, a
few Persians, mainly officials, and the solitary Jew dyer,
who, with his family, is found in all the larger villages
on this route.

An embroidery needle was found sticking in my
dhurrie a few days ago, and I had the good fortune
not only to get some coarse sewing-cotton but some
embroidery silks at Sain Kala, and having a piece of
serge to work on, and an outline of a blue centaurea, I
am no longer destitute of light occupation for the mid-day
halt.

Truly " the Sabbath was made for man " ! Apart
from any religious advantages, life would be very grind-
ing and monotonous without the change of occupation
which it brings. To stay in bed till eleven, to read, to
rest the servants, to intermit the perpetual driving, to
obtain recuperation of mind and body, are all advantages
which help to make Sundays red-letter days on the
journey; and last Sunday was specially restful.

In the afternoon I had a very intelligent visitor,
a Hakim from Tabriz, sent on sanitary duty in conse-
quence of a cholera scare—a flattering, hollow upper-
class Persian. He introduced politics, and talked
long on the relative prospects of Eussian or English