A RIDE TO TEHERAN IN 1888. 325 



closed, and it was cold, windy weather ; the situation 

 was exceedingly uncomfortable. Presently a wood 

 fire was lighted and a quantity of eggs and flat 

 Persian bread brought up and a samovar of boiling 

 water. In other places I frequently also was able to 

 procure milk, mutton, grapes, and pomegranates. 

 Under such chilly, draughty circumstances I should 

 have passed a sleepless night if I had not fortunately 

 been possessed of a fur sleeping-bag, eight feet in 

 length, made of opossum skin, impervious alike to cold 

 and to the attacks of insects. At two towns I passed 

 through on horseback, named Meana and Mazari, 

 there was said to exist a species of poisonous bug ; 

 though what ill effects its bite produced I never was 

 able to discover, as the accounts given me were quite 

 at variance. These insects are found at many other 

 places in Persia, at which I took care not to sleep ; 

 always pushing on even after dark, if necessary, as 

 far as the next post-station. At one of these towns 

 Colonel Bell, E.E., of the Indian Intelligence Depart- 

 ment, with whom I travelled after leaving Teheran, 

 expressed a desire to see one of these celebrated 

 creatures and have ocular proof of their existence ; 

 so a man was dispatched in search and in a few 

 moments returned with a poisonous bug in his hand. 

 It resembled an ordinary one, excepting that it pos- 

 sessed a hard horny carapace like a tortoise, from 

 beneath which a number of sharp claws radiated. It 

 was a most horrible and repulsive creature. 



I rode from Tabreez to Casvin in six days, mostly 



