Page:Kennedy, Robert John - A Journey in Khorassan (1890).djvu/20

 the greater part of the available space was taken up with provisions, pots, pans, and other cooking utensils, besides two or three small carpets and three large linen sacks, which, filled with straw at night and spread upon the bare floor, served as beds.

The stations at which horses are changed vary in distance from sixteen to thirty miles. They are all built practically upon the same model. Four high, square, sun-dried mud walls, with flat roofs, surmounted by battlements and flanked by four towers, as a defence against Turcoman raiders, enclose a small, open, square yard, usually filled with manure and filth of every description. Round the yard are ranged stables, in which are to be found half a dozen of the most wretched specimens of the equine race to be seen anywhere outside of a Spanish bull-ring. On entering the massive doorway, which is always carefully closed at night, two small rooms are discovered, the one on the right, the other on the left; these rooms are perfectly empty of everything except dust and dirt. There are no windows, and the fireplace is generally constructed in such a manner that