Europe—" what do you mean by the salutation
' May your shadow never be less?'"

"We live," answered the khan, pleasantly,
"under a very hot sun in Persia, and we retire
to the shadow for repose and peace. The power
of a great man gives rest and tranquillity to
many, for none dare to injure or molest those
whom he protects. So we call that power his
shadow, and hope for our own sakes as well as
his that it may never diminish."

The superstitions peculiar to Persia are very
numerous. If the fast preceding Christmas
happens to commence on Sunday, expect a hard
winter and much snow, followed by a wet spring
and a sickly summer.

If on the first Friday of the moon her corners
are nearly perpendicular, expect a famine, wars
in Turkey, and the birth of many children.

A skewbald horse is said to bring disaster to
its owner. Commonly the death of a child.

The Persians are, perhaps, the most licentious
people in the world, but side by side with all
this depravity of manners is an odd kind of
prudery. One day an acquaintance of mine
sent for a barber's apprentice. Another came.
My acquaintance asked why the man who usually
came did not come on that occasion.

"Oh!" replied the master-barber, "he is
gone to Mazanderan."

"And when will he be back?"

"I do not know. I am not anxious for his
return."

"Why not?"

"He is a very disreputable man."

"How so?"

"When he goes to bed he takes off his
trousers."

"Indeed, shocking depravity."

"All Persians should sleep in their clothes."

A bath belonging to a great khan fell down
and smothered sixteen people during some heavy
rains. Attempt was made to rescue them, but
the high priest interfered and refused to allow
the bodies to be dug out, alleging that naked
men and women could not be thus exposed
together in case any of them should be still alive.
The ground was then given up for a cemetery.

In spite of bad government, waste, and false
ideas of every kind, Persia is still, perhaps, the
most prosperous kingdom of the East. The
state of agriculture in Persia, for instance, is far
better than in Turkey, although it presents the
same Oriental picture of waste and unthrift.
Field labour in Persia is chiefly performed by
women. All crops in Persia must be artificially
irrigated, as rain seldom falls there during the
warm months of the year. The fact that the
plains are nearly level facilitates the process.
Water is taken by canals from the small rivers
that roll down the mountains, and conveyed
along near the foot of the declivities. Smaller
canals leading from the main ones carry it down
to prescribed sections of the plain; and these
are again subdivided and conducted to particular
fields, as it is needed. The openings from the
main canals are readily closed when sufficient
water is taken out for a given field, and the
stream then passes on to cheer and fertilise the
thirsty soil of the next neighbour. The ease
with which the gardener changes these streams,
by closing or opening a channel with his spade,
or even with his foot, vividly illustrates the
scriptural allusion to Divine sovereignty: "The
king's heart is in the hand of the Lord as the
rivers of water: He turneth it whithersoever He
will." If the fields are not level, they must be
divided and worked by a spade or plough into
level sections, each enclosed within a ridge a
few inches high; and these divisions are
successively watered.

The water privileges are a great subject of
contest, a portion each farmer or landowner
being entitled to only on particular days or
hours of the week; and it often happens towards
the close of summer, when the streams are low,
that quarrels arise on the subject, the water
being exhausted before it reaches the lower
parts of the plain, and then there is a fight.
Where streams do not exist, or cannot readily
be conducted, wells are in some cases dug, from
which water is drawn with a bucket of skin upon
a windlass turned by an ox, as in ancient Egypt.
In other cases a well is sunk upon a descending
plain till a spring is found, and a canal cut from
the bottom underground, descending just enough
to convey its water along; and a few yards from
the first a second well is dug, that the earth, in
cutting the subterranean passage, may be drawn
out; and the same process is repeated till the
spring is conveyed to the surface, and made to
irrigate the adjacent fields. The rapidity with
which the wells are dug is surprising. Two
men—one at the top with a small hand-windlass,
and a leather bucket to draw up the soil, and
the other below with an iron prong like a tusk,
furnished with a short handle, to dig it up,
and a huge iron spoon with which to fill the
bucket—will work down twenty to twenty-five
feet per day; and the soil is so dry as to leave
no curve nor wall to prevent it from passing.

The grist mill is the only species of machinery
moved by water in Persia. This is exceedingly
simple in its construction, consisting merely of
a perpendicular shaft with a water-wheel
attached to the bottom, and the upper millstone
placed upon the top. Water is conveyed from
the canal down to the buckets of the wheel by
a large spout or trough dug from the trunk of
a tree very narrow at the surface, and often
entirely covered over with pieces of board. This
spout is placed at an angle of at least forty-five
degrees, and, with a head of fifteen to twenty
feet, it turns the wheel with prodigious rapidity
and power. The Persians, having no means of
bolting their flour, sift it with coarse sieves by
hand. " Two women grinding at the mill," a
small hand-mill, is still a familiar scene in Persia
among the peasants.

The pleasures of the country gentlemen are
the same as those known in Europe in the
middle ages. Hawking is, perhaps, the chief.
A nobleman often rides abroad with a falcon on
his wrist. The right hand is covered with a
glove, the only case in which the Persian makes