MY INTERPRETER RETURNS. 235 



being to reach the Pacific through Turkestan and 

 China. 



Suddenly one day, when nearing Tabreez, I saw 

 away off on the desert a sight that made me blink and 

 rub my eyes to make sure that it was not a mere opti- 

 cal illusion I was looking at. The deserts of Persia are 

 famous for producing bogus objects — mirages of lakes 

 and waving palms ; of lovely castles, and similar fasci- 

 nating scenes ; but this time it was none of these. Miles 

 away to the north, seemingly suspended in mid-air, was 

 a league-long row of telegraph poles, straight as a die, 

 even as the pickets of a garden fence. 



As I drew nearer, the line assumed more definite 

 form. Its marvelous symmetry, I then discovered, was 

 not the enchantment of distance, but a solid reality 

 in English iron, with the name of the contracting firm 

 stamped on the poles. Every pole tapering from a 

 circumference of twenty inches at the bottom to six or 

 eight at the top, and, across the dead-level wastes of the 

 Persian plains, set up as evenly and perpendicularly as 

 they might have been in Hyde Park. It is worth 

 noting, perhaps, by the way, that the English always 

 take particular pains to have everything of this kind 

 very superior in the East ; it is a perpetual source of 

 wonder and admiration to the natives ; a standing ad- 

 vertisement of England's wealth, power, and ability 

 to the multitude who have no other way of learn- 

 ing. 



From Tabreez I was able to follow this infallible 

 guide into Teheran. Often I could see it stretching 

 ahead of me mile after mile, the poles so even that they 

 seemed not to vary an inch, and disappearing in the 



