jyiAY 11, 1857.] RAWLINSON ON MOHAM'RAH. 359, 



about a fortnight after the great heats had fairly set iu, and at that 

 time the thermometer used to rise daily to 130° in the up-stair 

 rooms, obliging him, in common with the rest of the inhabitants, to 

 take refuge in subterranean caverns excavated in the solid rock 40 

 or 50 feet below the surface. The population of Shuster and Dizful, 

 during the great heats, thus lived almost entirely under ground. But 

 from that place (Dizful), in two days, he got upon the snowy moun- 

 tains and enjoyed a most delightful climate. As our troops would 

 have to remain in Persia through the summer, the treaty providing 

 that they should not retire until three months after the ratification, 

 which would take place early in the month of June — and June, 

 July, and August being the three worst months in the year — he 

 could only hope that the General would not remain at Moham'rah, 

 but would take up a position in the interior of the country, either at 

 Ahwaz itself, or at any rate half-way between Moham'rah and 

 Ahwaz, beyond the reach of the malaria. In such a position, if the 

 troops were well hutted, and the huts were suirounded with camel 

 thorn, the temperature could be reduced to quite a bearable point. 

 In fact when the thermometer at Baghdad in the shade had been 

 125° or 130°, he had seen in houses of this sort, surrounded with 

 camel thorn, and constantly watered to produce evaporation, the 

 temperature reduced as low as 80°, and with ordinary care the ther- 

 mometer would never rise above 90°. He, accordingly, hoped that 

 General Outram would take these precautions and canton his troops 

 on the river, either at Sabla or Ahwaz, where the dryness of the 

 atmosphere was peculiarly favourable to evaporation, such as he had 

 described. With regard to food also, the whole of this province of 

 Susiana at the present time was one mass of the most luxuriant 

 vegetation. There was probably no country in the world richer 

 than the neighbourhood of Shuster. The river Karun, above 

 Shuster, was divided into two branches, which joined again about 

 thirty miles below, and the country between the two arms re- 

 ticulated with canals, and cultivated throughout, presented the 

 aspect of one continuous garden, and yielded all sorts of tropical 

 productions, some of which he might enumerate. In the first place 

 there was a vast quantity of sugar-cane, and the manufacture of 

 sugar had always been carried on, it would seem, to a great 

 extent in the province, one of the classical epithets of the article 

 in Persian poetry being derived from a city in the vicinity of 

 Shuster.* Then there was a considerable cultivation both of opium 



* The allusion is to the Kend-i-Asken, or " Sugar of Asker," so called from 

 the city of Asker-i-Mokrim, of which the ruins are to be seen on the left arm of 

 the Karun (the Masrukdn of the geographers), a few miles to the north of 

 Bend-i-Kir. 



