By this means, when the latter are not in public use, the telegraphist can lighten his weary hours by animated conversation with his colleague two or three hundred miles away on congenial topics--the state of the weather, rate of exchange, chances of promotion, and so on.

Living, moreover, at most of the stations is good and cheap; there is plenty of sport; and if a young unmarried man only keeps clear of the attractions of the fair sex, he soon makes friends among the natives.

Love intrigues are dangerous in Persia.
They once led to the massacre of the whole of the Russian Legation at Teheran.
Ispahan is a city of ruins.

A Persian will tell you, with pride, that it is nearly fifteen miles in circumference, but a third of this consists of heaps of stones, with merely the foundation-lines around to show that they were once palaces or more modest habitations.
Chardin the traveller, writing in A.D.1667, gives the population of Ispahan at considerably over a million, but it does not now exceed fifty thousand, including the suburb of Djulfa.

The Madrassa, or College, the governor's palace, and "Chil Situn," or "Palace of the Forty Pillars," are the only buildings that still retain some traces of their former glory.