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and bed in the garden, with all the surrounding oriental scenery, 

 minutely resembled a picture drawn by the son of Sirach; " I was 

 exalted like a cedar in Libanus, and as a cypress tree upon the 

 mountain of Hermon; I was like a tall palm-tree in Engaddi, and 

 a rose in Jericho; as a fair olive in a pleasant field, and as a plane- 

 tree by the water. I gave a sweet smell like cinnamon and aspa- 

 lathus; I yielded a pleasant odour as myrrh, galbanum, and frank- 

 incense. I came out as a brook from a river, and as a conduit 

 into a garden; to water my best garden, and abundantly to water 

 my garden bed." 



How these oriental portraits may suit in a cold climate I can- 

 not determine. I doubly felt their truth and beauty in the sultry 

 spot where I wrote them; although for the first time during my resi- 

 dence in Hindostan I was then on the borders of the temperate zone. 



Such as above described by an ancient writer, is still the per- 

 fection of an eastern garden. The same trees shade their retreats, 

 the same flowers adorn their borders; but especially the rose of 

 Sharon, or the Damascus rose, which from the age of Solomon to 

 the present day has been an universal favourite; and formerly, a 

 considerable quantity of ottar of roses, the most delicate of all 

 perfumes, was made from the rosaries near Ahmed-abad. The 

 usual method of making this is to gather the roses with their 

 calyxes, and put them into a still, with nearly double their weight 

 of water; which, when sufficiently distilled, will be highly scented 

 with roses : it is then poured into shallow earthen vessels, and ex- 

 posed to the nocturnal air; the next morning the ottar or essential 

 oil, extracted from the flowers, is found in small congealed parti- 

 cles, swimming on the surface; it is carefully collected and pre- 



