The owner of the village
place. They either keep them for furnishing, or sell them for
ten tomans or so after a month's labour upon them. The felt
rugs, made of wool, soap, and water, kneaded together and
rolled over and over on the floor until it becomes the right
shape and consistency, are much cheaper: I bought one for six
shillings and used it for the rest of my journey.
On the second day of my stay the owner of the village came
with the doctor to see me. He was an officer stationed in
Tabriz, a very trim good-looking man in gaiters and khaki,
with a gold tooth and pleasant manners, and many apologies
for the simplicity of his village, together with a pride in it
which came out as soon as I told him how much I liked its
high air and quietness. We would shoot ibex as soon as I
was stronger, said he.
He was staying in the place to arrange his daughter's wed-
ding, and as soon as I was able to negotiate the steep hillside,
I climbed to the other end of the village and called both on
him and on the doctor's wife. The latter was a pretty woman
neatly dressed in the city fashion, with a white veil pinned
under her chin, and evidently on very good terms with her
young husband. Two ragged but healthy boys, Gustarz and
Darius, were running about, and the baby Raushana, or Rox-
ana (after the Persian wife of Alexander), whose teething had
so providentially brought the party up here, was gurgling on
her father's knee while, as best he could, he pounded medicines
for me in a mortar on the floor, and told me that Alexander
the Great had been a Persian.
The other household was not nearly so pleasant, for the
Arbab had no wish to show me his daughter, of whom he was
ashamed, and she herself shared the feeling so thoroughly that
she could hardly be induced to speak at all. Her father had
never seen her or troubled about her since he departed in her
infancy> collected another wife somewhere else, and left his
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