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Thus ihc noisy processions, and various ceremonies performed 

 by ihe relations and lured mourners for the murdered cavalry 

 officer, continued at stated hours for several days. And as the 

 Mahomedan burying-ground and place of prayer was very near 

 my garden, they took care I should not be without some share in 

 the tragedy. I certainly felt many unpleasant sensations, although 

 after the first onset I was perfectly convinced there was no real 

 sorrow in the case. It was rather a daily counterpart of Chardin's 

 Persian scene, where, speaking of the Asiatic women, he says, 

 " their sentiments of joy or of grief are properly transports ; and 

 their transports are ungoverned, excessive, and truly outrageous. 

 When any one returns from a long journey, or dies, his family 

 burst into cries, that may be heard twenty doors off; and this is 

 renewed at different times, and continues many days, according 

 to the vigour of the passion. Especially are these cries long in 

 the case of death, and frightful ; for the mourning is downright 

 despair, and an image of hell. I was lodged at Ispahan near the 

 royal square; the mistress of the house next to mine died at that 

 time. The moment she expired, all the family, to the number of 

 twenty-five or thirty. people, set up such a furious cry, that I Mas 

 quite startled, and was above two hours before 1 could recover 

 myself. These cries continue a long time, then cease all at 

 once ; they begin again as suddenly at day-break, and in concert. 

 It is this suddenness which is so terrifying, together with a 

 greater shrillness and loudness than one could possibly imagine. 

 This enraged kind of mourning, if I may so call it, continued forty 

 days, not equally violent, but with diminution from day today. 

 The longest and most violent acts were when they washed the 



