1834.] Persia and Mesopotamia. 457 



that tlie whole world are their enemies. These villagers appeared the 

 poorest I had yet seen. Both sexes were clad in rags, and the children 

 to the age of seven or eight were invariably naked. They appeared to 

 me to possess neither food nor furniture beyond the milk of a few sheep 

 and goats, and a scanty supply of grapes, which in the summer season 

 grow on vines that spring up between the clefts of the rocks. I ascend- 

 ed a lofty eminence behind the village, which commanded an admirable 

 view of the Araxes. No outlet for the stream appeared in any one 

 direction, the curves of the river's banks enclosing the opposite points 

 gave it the appearance of a lake completely ' land-locked ;' while de- 

 tached rocks rising at a distance in a pyramidal form gave an increased 

 magnificence to the scene. 



Quitting these poor borderers, who were ground and crushed by 

 Prince Khosrou like corn between the upper and nether mill-stones, 

 we proceeded in an easterly direction, and crossed the bed of a river, 

 or rather mountain-torrent, in which the actual stream of water when we 

 passed was not above four yards in breadth, though the channel itself 

 was at least forty. It falls into the Araxes about ten miles eastward 

 of the bridge, in a direction north and south. We travelled to a village 

 called Molaun, distant about seventeen miles from Khomorlu. The 

 general direction of the road was south by east. The country was 

 singularly wild ; indeed, our road lay over a succession of mountains, 

 which stretched in continual lines as far as the view extended. No 

 soil covered the rocks, no verdure enlivened them ; a few bushes of the 

 melancholy wild cypress, and some stunted oaks, comprised the whole 

 of the vegetable world at this season. The approach to the village 

 was both difficult and dangerous. From this the direction of our road 

 varied from S. E. by S. to S. S. E. a distance of three farsangs, or 

 twelve miles, to the hamlet of Ruswar, standing in a scene as desolate, 

 and in a valley as gloomy, as can well be imagined. Not even a tree 

 marks the course of a stream that gives water to the inhabitants. All 

 bespeaks misery and mistrust, as the neighbouring hills are haunted by 

 a number of predatory tribes. My host, whose poverty was perhaps 

 his greatest crime, had on the preceding evening lost his only daugh- 

 ter. The robbers had stolen her in lieu of tribute ! At this place we 

 certainly had an opportunity of observing the extreme misery of the 

 peasantry, who in addition to heavy taxes, by which they were already 

 oppressed, were subject to such perpetual depredation from free-booters, 

 that those who were not already ruined by contribution and pillage, 

 found it prudent to present an appearance of the most abject wretched- 

 ness as their only security against further exactions, 

 2 N 



