bounds and sudden freaks: which effort of the dog's, so far impeded the animal's flight, as, at last, to allow one of my servants to seize him. A British bull-dog could

not have shown more determination, or strength of mouth, at the nose of a bull, than was evinced by my slightly-made Persian greyhound Cooley, (the spotted,) in his contest with this strong and very highly-mettled horse."

Koomishan furnishes curious traits of national manner:

us

"In passing the walls of more than one deserted hamlet, our mehmandar pointed out to certain spots, where he told us blood had been shed. Sometimes the perpetrators were open inva❤ ders; but oftener, the desolators of the little places before us were the banditti mountaineers; who, for ages past, have rendered the route from Ourtchiny to the very gates of Shiraz an expedition of danger. At the turning of a murderous looking dell, he showed us a ruin, where the present Shah's brother, the late Hossein Kouli Khan, surprised a band of about thirty Bactiaries dividing their spoil. They were seized immediately. He then ordered his ple to punish the robbers by depriving them of the sight of their left eyes and cutting off their right hands. When he was obeyed, he dismissed the mountaineers to their tribes, telling them to take those marks on their bodies, as a warning to their fellows of the manner in which all should be treated, who were caught committing any depredation on hill or valley within the Persian dominions.

peo

"In the midst of one of the mehmandar's long stories, we

descried a multitude of people at a distance; which, on approaching near, we found to be a company of pilgrims, from Shiraz and its vicinity, journeying to Kerbela, to pay their devotions at the tomb of the martyred Hossein. The party consisted of men, women, and children; some on foot, others on horseback, mules, or asses. The dead too, formed part of the procession; several being slung in their coffins on the sides of the beast of burthen, in the same way with the similar translations near the sacred precincts of Kom. But in this caravan to Kerbela, there were two or three corses of great men, travelling to take their last repose by the side of the brave and virtuous Hossein; and these bodies were conveyed in tack-i-ravans, (a sort of palanquin,) attended by groups of horsemen. Amongst the illustrious remains were those of Jaffier Khan, a prince who onoe governed a fine district in India, and who, from the extraordinary noble qualities of his heart, and as rare cultivation of mind, was held in high respect by all our countrymen in that part of the East."

At the caravansary at Yezdikhast, which they reached in two days from Koomishah, sir Robert says—

"In the room where my mummud was spread on the floor, I found the names of many preceding travellers written on the walls. Some of the oldest dates were,

Riberra, 1641.'- Lorenzo Visang, 1645.-A. M. 1653.’— and another, illegible, 1690.'

"This little valley, or rather bounding chasm, between the two most celebrated divisions of the Persian

Persian empire, Irak and Fars, has many interesting subjects of history attached to it, and some of horrible complexion. During the civil contests which followed the death of Kerim Khan, (the virtuous founder of the Zend dynasty, which perished in a few years after his demise, from the worthlessness of his heirs,) Zackee Khan, who had usurped the authority of the kingdom, and who was as execrable a tyrant as ever disgraced human nature, coming to Yezdikhast from Shiraz in his way to Ispahan, suddenly made a demand on the magistrates for a sum of money due to the government, which he accused them of secreting; they denied the arrears, asserted they had no money concealed, and declared it beyond their power to collect the sum he required. On finding the unhappy citizens firm in the truth of what they said, without more ado, he ordered a certain number of them to be taken to a point of the rock near the window where he sat, and immediately hurled to the bottom of the precipice. He was obeyed; and about eighteen or nineteen of the most respected characters in the town, were the next moment seen, lying a horrible mangled spectacle, dead, or expiring amongst the rocks beneath. One of the wretched victims escaped with his life, and still exists; seeming a miraculous preservation to one who looks up at the immense height of the rock where the sentence was executed. But, on the tyrant proceeding to issue commands of a still more wanton and atrocious cruelty, his own followers conceived so instant an indignation against him, that a conspiracy was formed almost

by the interchange of looks, and before the setting of another sun he perished by their daggers. This catastrophe happened about the year 1779. At a farsang's distance from Yezdikhast, the great southern road to Shiraz separates into two routes, one goes southwest through Deggerdoo,' the other eastward by Shulgastan; the latter was to be my road."

At Persepolis sir Robert furnishes interesting historical illustrations of the bas-reliefs. The general inference is that, Shem the son of Noah, is the Persian patriarch Jemsheed—" whose son Elam gave his name to the country, while the more venerable one of his father was perpetuated in the successive dynasties of his race, even till Yezdijird, the last king of the line, who perished under the arms of the caliphs, in comparatively modern times;"and that Darius Hystaspes was the monarch, under whose direction the decorations of Persepolis (or at least of the principal remaining parts of the palace) were executed.

"On ascending the platform on which the palace of Chehelminar once stood, nothing can be more striking than the view of its ruins; so vast and magnificent, so fallen, mutilated and silent: the court of Cyrus, and the scene of his bounties; the pavilion of Alexander's triumph, and, alas! the awful memorial of the wantonness of his power. But every object, when I saw it, was as beautiful as desolate; amidst the pleasing memories of the past, awakening poignant regret, that such noble works of human ingenuity should be left to the desert alone; that the pile of indefatigable labour

should

should be destined, from the vicissitudes of revolution, and the caprice, ignorance, or fanaticism of succeeding times, to be left in total neglect; or, when noticed, doomed to the predatory mallet, and every other attack of unreflecting destruction."

"Here" (he continues, after describing the ruins,) "may have stood the very palace of Persepolis, which fell a sacrifice to the drunken revelry of the Macedonian conqueror. That it did stand on this platform, there cannot be a doubt, as it manifestly is the quarter of the city that was assigned to the royal residence; and there does not appear a spot over the whole space, so likely to be chosen for the banqueting halls of the sovereign, when himself and his friends must be in their most unguarded moments, as this quadrangle, in the midst of the other regal edifices, and so standing as if in a sanctuary. Thus much for the situation alone; but the circumstance of so vast a space, with so singular a mound occupying so large a portion of it, strongly inclines me to believe that I am not mistaken, in assigning that heap to the desolating brands of Alexander and his, then, half-frantic compeers. Certainly not a trace of the effects of fire is discernible on any of the adjacent walls; and it may be alleged, that if so considerable a building, in their vicinity, had been consumed to ashes, the ravages of the flames must have reached and marked some of them. But in looking on the plan, and perceiving how unconnectedly all the edifices stood from each other, not merely separated by spacious areas, but divided by detached terraces, we

might easily imagine how one of them might be burnt to the ground, without a spark reaching any of the others. Besides, the soli lity of the walls of these palaces are calculated to confine the fire, as in a furnace, within whichever of them it might be kindled, while it continued devouring all, interiorly, that was combustible in its way. The internal materials of the destroyed palace, according to Q. Curtius, (lib. v.) were cedar, and other consumable substances; these, with the splendid hangings, and carpets on the walls and floors, with the more ample draperies suspended over the usual openings in the sides of the grand saloons, for the double purpose of air and to shield them from the sun, would, altogether, when once the brand was set to the building, hasten its destruction. That such veils from the heat were of ancient use in Persia, we find in the Book of Esther, (ch. 1. ver. 6.) speaking of the palace, 'Where were white, green, and blue hangings, fastened with cords of fine linen to silver rings, and pillars of marble.' The custom, indeed, prevails to the present day. It being admitted, that the interior alone of the edifice was consumed, the next objection might be, that no trace of such solid walls are yet standing. But the substance of the stones, of which they were built, would be so injured by the extreme action of the fire, that we may readily conceive its rapid crumbling to decay, and falling in upon the already prostrated roof. Besides, we learn from Plutarch, that the madness of Alexander's intoxication subsided almost as soon as the wanton act he had committed blazed into full effect, and that,

with laudable repentance and activity, he commenced every exertion to extinguish, or prevent the flames from spreading. In this attempt it is likely that a very common mode, under similar circumstances, would be resorted to, and part of the edifice itself battered in, to smother the fire. The foundation of the mound would thus be raised at once, and the casualties of successive ages could not fail heaping it with earth, till it assumed the rounded form in which it now appears.

"Q. Curtius, in his account of this affair, exaggerates the extent of the destruction, by saying that Alexander did not confine his violence to the palace, but, at the instigation of a prostitute, and infuriated with wine, took a flaming brand, and totally destroyed the city he had just before spared with the noblest clemency, when his soldiers had taken it sword in hand. He now burnt it to the ground, not leaving a vestige of its lofty buildings to mark the spot on which it stood; and only to be traced in our times by the stream of the Araxes, said to have flowed twenty stades from its walls.' But so far from this account being correct, we find, both from Strabo and Arrian, that Alexander inhabited the royal palace of Persepolis, after his return from India. Hence, only one detached part of it could have been consumed. And a hundred and sixty years afterwards Antiochus Epiphanius formed a project to pillage the city of Persepolis and its temple. (2 Maccabees.) This is one evidence, that even the riches of the ancient capital existed long after the Macedonian conquest. Plutarch's description of the disgrace

ful scene which led to the disaster I am discussing, confirms me in the idea that it was the banqueting-house alone, where the king and his companions were feasting, to which they set fire. The historian mentions, that in the midst of the revels, the courtesan Thais, an Athenian by birth, boasted of the pleasure she felt in thus triumphing over Persia in the stately palace of its monarchs, and expatiated on the glory it would be to set fire to the court of Xerxes with her own hands, while the conqueror should stand by and approve the deed. Excited by this, and the wine he had drunk, the king starts from his seat, seizes a burning torch, and with his chaplet of feasting on his head, rushes forward, with his party in the same way armed, and sets the whole in a blaze. However,' adds his biographer, all writers agree that he soon repented of his rashness, and made every effort to extinguish the flames.' Had he left the place he was in to kindle any other building of the palace, it must have been a business of so much trouble and contrivance to ignite stone walls and pillars with the simple brands in their hands, that Alexander could not but have had ample time to come to his senses, before the mischief was at all effected. But instead of any such elaborate process, we find that the whole was the action of an instant; and therefore nothing is so likely as that Thais and the king would light the draperies of the hall with their torches, and then rush out, with the mad crew at their heels, dancing and shouting, as the historian describes, till the rising spires of the flames reminded Alexander that he was a king,

and

and his most royal prerogative that of mercy. That the ruin was not cleared for the away purpose of rebuilding, is not a surprising circumstance, when we consider the brevity of Alexander's life, and the periods of confusion which followed his death. The city gradually fell into neglect, and consequent decay after this, its first recorded calamity; but such neglect was not the effect of the destruction then wrought, but of the previous conquest by a foreign power. A long succession of stranger princes, for so we may. call both the Greeks and the Parthians, naturally inclined to prefer any city as their residence before the capital of the ancient race, promoted the abandonment of these walls and towers, which the cruel devastation of the Arabs in after-ages utterly accomplished. Hence it is very probable, that this very spot has remained in almost the same state from the night of its stately palace's' destruction, which took place 329 years before the birth of our Saviour, to the day in which I stood by its mound and made my notes for these observa

6

tions."

5.-Travels in Palestine, through the countries of Bashan and Gilead, east of the river Jordan; including a visit to the cities of Geraza and Gamala, in the Decapolis. By J. S. Buckingham, esq., Member of the Asiatic Society, Calcutta, and the Literary Societies of Madras and Bombay. Mr. Buckingham has been a great traveller. At the age of nine he entered the naval service,

and within twelve months was made prisoner by the Spaniards. He has since visited America, the Bahamas, the West Indies, Sicily, Malta, the continent of Greece, the coasts of Asia Minor, and the Gulph of Smyrna. He ascended the Nile and attempted to cross the desert in returning from Nubia; but was stripped naked, plundered and abandoned to destruc. tion among the mountains. He made his way, however, to Kosseir, in the depth of an Egyptian winter. After this he penetrated the desert of Suez, in the disguise of an Egyptian Fellar; and subsequently accompanied, in the attire of a mamalouk, a caravan of 50,000 pilgrims to Mecca; but being wrecked, was conveyed to India. This country and Egypt now became his alternate resi dences tiil he was commissioned to carry to our eastern seat of government a treaty, which had been concluded with the pasha of Egypt by the British consul. This was to be conveyed by the route of Syria and Mesopotamia.

The most important part of these travels is the description of Bashan and Gilead, east of the Jordan. No traveller, whose works are before the public, has hitherto explored the country beyond this river; and as Mr. B.'s account of this neighbourhood occupies the greater portion of his volume, the acquirement of much and valuable information will naturally result from the perusal of his pages, which conduct us into the untrodden region of the Decapolis.

Mr. Buckingham left Alexandria in a skutoor, or small vessel peculiar to the Syrian coast, on the 25th of December, 1815. The

captain