Vol. V, No. 8.] Some Persian Folk-lore Stories. 287 
NS. 
‘“be attributed to those same men whose hope of buried 
‘“treasure led them to break into and explore the tombs. 
‘‘These channels are so low and so narrow that it is very 
‘« difficult to walk in them, or to stand upright, except at 
‘* some very few places. I was told that they led to tombs, 
‘to caves, to subterranean chambers, and that I should only 
‘* attempt to follow them at the peril of my life; however, I 
‘¢ did not find it so at all. I entered at seven or eight different 
‘‘ points, and I went in as far as a hundred and fifty yards in 
‘Some. I had several attendants with me carrying lighted 
‘canes in their hands. I left the more timid fairly close to 
“the entrance at thirty paces distant one from the other, and 
‘T advanced with the confidence of a man who imagines that 
‘‘he is going to find wonders; but I frequently found myself 
‘‘ brought to a fu'l stop: sometimes the passage became so 
“narrow and so low, that I could scarcely advance on my 
“nearly stifled for want of air, one could not have stirred 
es 
em. 
‘IT found there many bones of animals, but principally the 
‘‘horns of goats; these bones were quite white, an much 
‘“onawed: and that was all I discovered. But I observed 
‘‘ with admiration the excellence of the cutting of the rock 
‘and the hardness of the marble. The sides of the channels 
** are smooth and polished like the glass of a mirror; the floor 
‘or bottom is covered with a sticky kind of clay, quite damp 
‘“€ and soft; and I believe that it is always so, on account of 
‘the natural humidity of the place and the rain water which 
‘I to myself on my first visit; so narrow that I a young man 
“of twenty years of age could not traverse them, slim as I 
1 fours 
** grcund, and the stature of the men represented on its stones, 
would incline one to imagine that the men who built it must 
