ease; and as soon as they perceived the top of the wave giving way with their weight, they most expertly dropped on their knees, and in that manner descended with the sand, which was so loose that the first camel made a path sufficient for the others to follow. This impediment however was but trifling, compared to what our travellers suffered from floating or moving particles of sand. The desert seemed, at the distance of half a mile, to be a flat surface, about eight or ten inches above the level of the waves. This cloud or vapour appeared constantly to recede as they advanced, and at times completely enveloped them, filling their eyes, ears and mouths, and causing a most disagreeable sensation. It was productive of great irritation and severe thirst, which was not a little increased by the scorching rays of the sun. The ground was so hot as to blister the feet, even through the shoes; and the natives affirmed that it was the violent heat which occasioned the sand to move through the atmosphere. Mr. Pottinger indeed remarked that this phenomenon was only seen during the heat of the day. The sahrab,* or watery appearance, so common in all deserts, and the moving sands, were seen at the same time, and appeared to be perfectly distinct, the one having a luminous and the other a cloudy appearance. The wind in this desert commonly blows from the north-west; and during the hot summer months it is often so heated, as to destroy any thing, either animal or vegetable, with which it comes in contact: the route by which Capt. Christie and Mr. Pottinger travelled is, therefore, deemed impassable from the middle of May to the end of August.. This wind is distinguished throughout the East, by the term of the bade seemoom, or pestilential wind. It has been known to destroy even camels and other hardy animals, and its effects on the human frame are said to be the most dreadful that can possibly be conceived. In some instances it kills instantaneously; but in others the wretched sufferer lingers for hours, or even days, in the most excruciating torture.'-p. 223.

The climate of Persia is so various that Xenophon makes Cyrus say, my father's kingdom is so large that there is no enduring the cold on one side of it, nor the heat on the other.' In the lower plains, on the borders of the Indian ocean and the Persian gulph, and even at the capital Tehraun, the summers are represented as intolerably hot, whilst, in many of the mountainous regions, snow lies the whole year round. In the month of July, 1810, the hills were covered with snow, and in several of the vallies between Shirauz and Ispahan, we found it so cold, as to make it necessary to sleep under two or three pair of blankets;' and we find from Morier that, on the route from Tehraun to Constantinople, snow lay on the ground six inches deep in the month of June. The atmosphere is generally clear and dry, and the dews not insalubrious; excepting however in the mountainous provinces

Literally, the water of the desert.

of

of Ghilan and Mazanderaun, on the borders of the Caspian, which are considered as peculiarly unhealthy. Shah Abbas is said to have persuaded vast numbers of Christians from Armenia and Georgia to settle in those two provinces for the purpose of cultivating the silk worm. Thirty thousand families, according to Chardin, allured by the beauty of the country, transplanted themselves thither, of whom, within a century, four hundred only remained; the rest having died or abandoned the country. Agues and dropsies,' says Mr. Kinneir, are the prevalent disorders, and the natives have in general a sallow and bloated appearance.' Hanway, who visited these provinces, says, that old women, mules, and poultry, are the only animals there that enjoy good health.

The vallies and smaller plains within the mountains are the most fertile, and consequently the most populous, parts of the empire. In them are produced all that luxury or necessity can Wish Wine, sugar, fruits of every kind, wheat, barley, and ke; silk, cotton, indigo, opium, and tobacco, senna, rhubarb, saffron, manna, and assafoetida, are every where abundant, as well as all kinds of culinary vegetables. They have the olive and the palma christi; but the bituminous naphtha, or mineral pitch, supplies the place of oil for their lamps. They have abundance of sheep, with tails of such a weight that, according to Chardin, it is not unusual to place them on a little cart with two wheels. Goats are plentiful, as well as horned cattle; the latter, however, are rarely used as food. Poultry of all kinds is very abundant. They have an excellent breed of horses; and camels, mules, and asses, are the common beasts of burthen. In the woods and jungles are lions, tigers, leopards, and wild boars. Such are the general features, climate and productions of a country which Sir William Jones has pronounced the most beautiful and desirable in the whole world.

We know of no data whatever from which any thing like a tolerably correct estimate can be formed of the population of Persia. In Chardin's time, the natives pretended that it contained twenty-four provinces, five hundred and forty cities, towns and fortresses, and forty millions of souls. Mr. Kinneir thinks it doubtful whether the population of the whole extent of country between the Euphrates and the Indus would be found to amount to more than eighteen or twenty millions, including all the wandering tribes of every denomination. Both accounts have probably no other foundation than conjecture; but, in forming a judgment from the state of the country, we should say that the latter approaches the nearest to, and perhaps exceeds, the truth. Twenty-three provinces are enumerated and described by Mr. Kiuneir, but of these, the first ten only can be said either wholly

or

or partially to belong to Persia. The provinces of Georgia, Schirvan, and Daghestan are either in the hands of the Russians, or of independent chiefs; Mingrelia is divided between the Turks and Russians; Bulk, Seistan, Cabul, and Scind are inhabited by various tribes of men altogether different from, and independent of, the modern Persians. The title of his book might therefore have been- A Geographical Memoir of all the Countries between the Euphrates and the Indus.'

In all these countries the state and condition of the people appear to be pretty nearly the same. Whatever revolutions the Asiatic nations, even those where the arts and luxuries were carried to the highest pitch of perfection and profusion, may have undergone, the form of government has remained substantially the same. The prince or the conqueror was always a tyrant, the people were always slaves.

'From the earliest times to the present day, Persia (says Mr. Kinneir) has been subject to the will of a despotic prince, and no monarch ever ruled with a more arbitrary sway than the person who now fills the throne of that empire. He is the absolute master of the lives and property of his subjects, and is under no restraint in the exercise of his power. His commands are instantly obeyed, and the first man in the empire may, in a moment, without even the form of a trial, be stripped of his dignities and publicly bastinadoed.'

Yet this personage neither owes his elevation to the sword, nor to legitimate descent. As nephew to one of those wretched beings who, with the loss of sex, seem to lose all feelings of manhood and all sense of crimes, he quietly ascended. the throne, on the death of the uncle, in the year 1795. This eunuch, Aga Mahomet Khan, was himself an usurper, and had just completed the final destruction of the unfortunate race of Kerim Khan, in the person of Latif Ali, when he suddenly died. Futteh Ali Khan, the present sovereign, is said to be the least warlike prince that has sat on the throne of Persia since the last of the Sefis; he is even considered by his subjects to be deficient in personal courage; and yet,' says Mr. Kinneir, to read the history of his campaigns, a stranger would suppose him to have equalled, if not surpassed, in military fame, the most admired commanders the world has ever produced.' His family are of the Kajer tribe of Astrabad and Mazanderaun, which is of very inferior renown among the numerous and powerful tribes of the empire. We are told by Mr. Scott Waring, but on what authority we know not, that the people of the bazar refused to sell any article to a Kajer, on the plea that there was nothing sufficiently bad for one of that race. Yet, in direct contradiction to these two gentlemen, Mr. Morier assures us, that the Kedjars are the most ancient and honoured in Persia.' But

whatever

hatever deficiency there may be in his hereditary rank, or military renown, he is careful to make up in pretensions and titles, which, for absurdity and extravagance are, we should think, unequalled. In the preamble of a treaty concluded with Colonel Malcolm we find him thus designating himself.

'The high king, whose court is like that of Solomon's, the asylum of the world, the sign of the power of God, the jewel in the ring of kings, the ornament in the cheek of eternal empire, the grace of the beauty dsovereignty and royalty, the king of the universe like Caherman, the ansion of mercy and justice, the phoenix of good fortune, the eminence of never-fading prosperity, the king powerful as Alexander, who has no qual among the princes exalted to majesty by the heavens in this the, a shade from the shade of the most high, a prince before whom the sun is concealed, &c.'

Among the early acts of this mansion of mercy and justice' was that of the murder of Haji Ibrahim, one of the most respectable persons in the empire, by whose exertion and influence he had been quietly placed on the throne; but occurrences of this kind are nothing extraordinary in the eastern world. His face,' says Mr. Morier, is obscured by an immense beard and mustachios, which are kept very black, and it is only when he talks and smiles that his mouth is discovered.' He is said to have a taste for literature, and to write verses; and he employs both an historiographer and a poet to record his actions and recite his praise. If, as Mr. Morier was informed, the poet receives from the king a gold tomaun (nearly a pound sterling) for every couplet, he may laugh at the decree of fate which the eastern mythologists pretend to have doomed poets to perpetual poverty; but we doubt the fact. The king of Persia is the most avaricious of mortals: such is his venality that he actually sold the vizierat to his own son for ten thousand pounds; and all the inferior offices of the state are disposed of to the highest bidder.

great officers of state These are the azem, or

The sovereign will is the law; and two are the immediate executers of that law. grand vizier, who is the prime minister, and the ameen ed dowlah, or lord high treasurer. The vizier has the management of all foreign affairs, and is commander-in-chief of the army; the other is the secretary of state for the home department, charged with all matters relating to the revenue, and the imposition of taxes. The authority of these two men is subject to no controul; but their continuance in office, and even their existence depend on the caprice of the tyrant whom they serve. Under them are a host of inferior officers in the army, the household and the revenue departments, all of whom look up only to their immediate superior, whose protection is considered as most secure, when it is most

costly.

costly. The several provinces of Persia are subdivided into districts; the governors of the former are called beglerbegs, and of the latter hakim. Under pretence of an anxious solicitude for the welfare of the people, the beglerbegs at certain periods are called to court, to render an account of their administration, or, in other words, to pour into the lap of the sovereign and his two ministers, a large portion of the treasures extorted from the people; without which they are morally certain of losing the whole, and probably their eyes into the bargain. No inquiries are made as to the manner in which those treasures have been procured. The hakim only can tell this, and all that the hakim knows is from the kelounter, who superintends the collection of the tribute, and one of whom is found in every city, town, and village. He again shuffles off the responsibility to the ket-khoda, or chief of the village, whose pak-kur, or agent, is the only person who comes in immediate contact with the ryot or husbandman.

The extortions of these officers, and the oppressive taxes on every species of produce, not unfrequently 'drive the peasantry from the plains to join the banditti of the mountains. It is impossible that agriculture can flourish where property is held on so precarious a tenure, and always subject to systematic rapacity. The established tribute of the king, which was formerly one-tenth, is now said to be one-fifth of every species of produce; or rather of what might be produced; for the assessment is made, not on the actual produce of the land, but on the indirect criterion of produce, deduced from the number of cattle which each landholder employs. Every town and village is rated at a certain sum, and if one man cannot pay his quota his neighbour must raise it for him. There are besides many arbitrary taxes, of an occasional nature, as the passage of ambassadors, military expeditions, &c. which the ryots are called on to pay, as well as to satisfy the collector for this additional trouble; and as this office is purchased by him who holds it from his immediate superior, the amount of the purchase money usually regulates the rate of extortion.

There is, however, a pretended system of jurisprudence, founded on the precepts of the Koran, and a nominal judge of civil and criminal law, under the title of scheik ul islam. But the king himself is supreme judge, and the nasakchee bashee, an officer of high rank, the chief executioner, who requires no other authority than the king's firmaun to take off half the heads in the empire. The governors of provinces and of cities act as judges within their respective jurisdictions; but such is the justice of their decisions, that the rich man's hog invariably oversets the poor man's pot of oil. The ordinary punishments are privation of sight, bodily mutilations, and the bastinado on the soles of the feet. Theft is punished with

great