The Persian donkey is unquestionably the best in the East, and is not only speedy, but as strong as a horse.

We frequently passed one of these useful beasts carrying a whole family--monsieur, madame, and an unlimited number of bebes--to say nothing of heavy baggage, in one of the queer-looking arrangements (oblong boxes with a canvas covering stretched over a wooden framework) depicted on the next page.

An ordinary animal costs from two to three pounds (English), but a white one, the favourite mount of women and priests, will often fetch as much as ten or fifteen.
To reach Djulfa, the Armenian and European quarter of Ispahan, the latter city must be crossed, also the great stone bridge spanning the "Zandarood," or "Living River," so called from the supposed excellence of its water for drinking purposes, and its powers of prolonging life.
Nearing the bridge, we met a large funeral, evidently that of a person of high position, from the costly shawls which covered the bier.
[Illustration: A FAMILY PARTY] As in many Eastern countries, a man is never allowed to die in peace in Persia.

It is a ceremony like marriage or burial, and as soon as the doctors have pronounced a case hopeless, the friends and relations of the sick man crowd into his chamber and make themselves thoroughly at home, drinking tea and sherbet, and watching, through the smoke of many hubble-bubbles, the dying agonies of their friend.

The wife of the dying man sits at his side, occasionally holding to the nostrils the Persian substitute for smelling-salts, i.e.a piece of mud torn from the wall of the dwelling and moistened with cold water.