man's cheeks, and made him scream with pain and with frantic fear that
it was _his_ throat which was being cut. His master went to his
assistance and released him by wrenching open the stork's bill, but he
was so occupied with supporting his swooning servant that time was given
for the wounded stork to hurry away in safety, flapping its long wings
and snapping its powerful beak, as is the habit of this voiceless bird,
with all the appearance of triumph.

Enzelli is becoming the port of entry, for the North of Persia, of tea
from India and China. Till within a very short time most of the tea for
Persia, Trans-Caspia, and Russian Turkistan so far as Samarkand, passed
up from Bombay by the Persian Gulf ports. The late reduction in Russian
railway charges, and the low sea-freights from the East in the
oil-steamers returning to Batoum, have brought about this change.
Arrangements have been made for transit to Baku of Russian-owned tea
consigned to Persia on special terms of Customs drawback, and it is now
sold cheaper in Resht than in Baku, where it has a heavy duty added to
the price. The thin muslin-like manufactures of India, in demand in
Central Asia for wear in the hot dry summer, and which found their way
there from the Persian Gulf, are now following the same route as the
tea. Thus, steam and waterway are competing still more with the camel,
to make the longest way round the shortest one in point of time, and the
cheapest to the customers' homes.

As with tea, so Russian beet-sugar is cheaper at Enzelli-Resht than at
Baku, owing to the State bounty on export. The consumption of tea and
sugar, already large in Persia, is certain to increase in the North
through this development of Russian trade. French beet-sugar continues
to compete by way of Trebizond to Tabriz, but if the experiment now
being tried of manufacturing sugar in the vicinity of Tehran from beet