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seven other noblemen disguised as merchants, carrying with them 

 jewels and other valuable commodities, small of size, but in great 

 request at the courts of Asia. Under this disguise, which was a 

 sure passport in the East, where commerce has ever been so highly 

 respected, they passed through the hostile camp, and arrived safe 

 and unsuspected at the city adjoining to that fortress. Here the 

 splendor of the jewellery and other articles of traffic which they 

 had brought attracted general notice, and the fame of their arrival 

 soon reached the court, at a period when kings themselves did not 

 indignantly disdain sometimes to assume the honourable character 

 which these strangers bore. But their principal recommendation 

 to royal notice was the alleged plea of having been driven from the 

 Persian dominions by the tyranny and extortions of its monarch, 

 from whose barbarous exactions they professed to have fled for 

 protection to the court of Turan. Presents of high value, the 

 usual tribute on supplicating the patronage of the despots of Asia, 

 accompanied this address, and by degrees these mercantile strangers 

 grew into such high favour at the court of Turan, and so far had 

 the disguised Asfendiar wrought himself into the confidence of 

 Argiasp, that a sumptuous banquet was prepared by the king for 

 the princely adventurer. After a certain period, when he thought 

 the Persian forces had arrived near enough to execute their com- 

 mission, he obtained permission, in return s to provide an entertain- 

 ment, suitable to the high dignity of the guests, for the whole 

 Turanian court, in an extensive meadow adjoining the city. On 

 that day, the king, his family, the captive princesses, and all the 

 attendant officers of state, presuming that the invading army was 

 still at a great distance from the scene of their festivity, resigned 

 themselves to the unbounded joys of the banquet; but the nu- 

 merous fires kindled all over the plain, by which that banquet was 

 prepared, in addition, perhaps, to signals like our rockets, thrown 



