on the following day, April 20, through fierce storms of sleet and snow that swept pitilessly from the north during most of the day; and it was not until after five o'clock in the afternoon that I again reached Hamadan, having taken twelve hours to accomplish a distance of less than thirty miles.

CHAPTER XVII

FROM HAMADAN TO THE RUINED FIRE-TEMPLE NEAR

ISFAHAN

'Unto Fire, the son of the God Ormazd! Unto thee, O Fire, thou son of Ormazd, be grace, for thy worship, praise, propitiation, and glorification.'

AFTER remaining two nights at Hamadan upon the occasion of my second visit, I started late on the morning of the third day to continue my journey southward toward Isfahan, especially to visit the ruined fire-temple near that city. Weather and road alike were favorable, and we reached Nanaj at sunset, having travelled some thirty miles, which, owing to the late start, was less than my usual march, for I sometimes accomplished fifty miles, and occasionally even seventy. But I felt fatigued enough to be glad when my camp-bed was stretched for the night on the floor of the chāpār-khānah, after the servant of the post-house had swept the room a little more clean. There was much talk about bandits, as the post had been robbed on the previous night, but I paid little attention to the stories, fell asleep soon, and after a good night's rest was ready before daylight to mount Rakhsh and sit thirteen hours in the saddle.

Our cavalcade halted for the second night at the small village of Hassar, and we rose with the lark again next morning and proceeded along a well-watered plain that was fed by streams from the rocky hills on the right. The pace of our animals was good, and we easily overtook several caravans that had started an hour ahead of us, and all that day the conditions were favorable for rapid progress. It was Shakspere's birthday, a day memorable to me even in Persia, and the season

of spring was well advanced, so that I had an opportunity to watch the progress made by the peasants as they tilled their farms, and to compare their way of working with the agricultural methods employed in Zoroaster's day, when the occupation of the husbandman was synonymous with a religious pursuit.1

The Avesta alludes to farms, fields, and husbandry; it praises the work of the laborer who tills the earth with his right arm. and his left, with his left arm and his right,' and lauds the irrigation of arid land and the production and harvesting of crops. All kinds of work connected with the soil were equivalent to acts of righteousness,' and the agriculturist ranked next to the priest and the warrior in the constitution of the Zoroastrian community. Farming is not a lost industry in Persia to-day, but it has made little progress since the days of the Avesta, more than two thousand years ago.

The Persian farm is not fenced off, like ours, but has its boundaries marked by trenches and watercourses, which the Avesta describes as being 'the depth and breadth of a dog,'2 or has its limits indicated by a row of trees, which it well repays the laborer to plant, because of the scarcity of wood for fuel and timber in many parts of Persia. The government to-day would do well to encourage arboriculture, as it apparently did in the time of Darius.3

4

The implements of the husbandman are still of the most primitive kind, and my notes regarding them will serve as a commentary upon a passage in the Avesta which describes the equipment of the peasant. The first to be mentioned is the Pers. khish) which I have already described as a rude affair, consisting generally of the crotch of a tree cut so that one of the branches may serve as a plowshare

plow (Avestan aesha, Mod.

1 See Vd. 3. 23-33. 2 Vd. 14. 12-14.

3 For general references see Darmesteter, Le ZA. 2. 32; Jackson, JAOS. 21. 183; and Geiger, Ostīrā

nische Kultur, pp. 373-387, Erlangen, 1882.

4 See Vd. 14. 10-11.

See pp. 85-86, above.