RESIDENCE OF THE MISSION AT BUSHIRE. 
41 
kind were celebrating the feast. Among their sports, I discovered some¬ 
thing like the round-about of an English fair, except that it appeared 
of a much ruder construction. It consisted of two rope-seats suspended, 
in the form of a pair of scales, from a large stake fixed in the ground. 
In these were crowded full-grown men who, like boys, enjoyed the conti¬ 
nual twirl, in which the conductor of the sport, a poor Arab, was labour¬ 
ing with all his strength to keep the machine. 
The feast itself of the Bciiram begins of course successively in every 
season of the natural year, for in the formation of their civil year the 
Persians, like other Mahomedans, adopt lunar months. When it occurs 
in summer, the Ramazan , or month of fasting which precedes it, be¬ 
comes extremely severe; every man of every kind of business, the la¬ 
bourer in the midst of the hardest work, is forbidden to take any kind 
of nourishment from sun-rise to sun-set, during the longest days of the 
year. Their full day is calculated from sun-set to sun-set, but their sub¬ 
division of time varies like that of the Hindoos and Mussulmans of 
India, according to the difference of the length of the natural day. In 
their calculation of the close of the fast, and the commencement of the 
Bairam, they are seldom assisted by almanacks: it frequently happens, 
therefore, that the same feast is celebrated two days earlier, or de¬ 
layed two days later in different parts of the country, according to 
the state of the atmosphere: as the new moon may be obscured by 
clouds in one city or displayed in another by the clearness of the sky. 
On the 21st of November Mahomed Hassan Khan Karaguzlou 
paid the appointed visit to the Envoy. A part of the body guard w'as 
sent out to meet him, and we received him as before in uniforms and 
hats. After the usual ceremonies were over, the Envoy and his guest 
retired to an inner apartment; and after a conference, which lasted four 
hours, the Khan departed to Bushire with the same escort, to whom on 
parting he gave a present of fifty Venetian sequins. The conference 
had been satisfactory, as at dinner the Envoy announced to us that we 
might now complete all our preparations for a journey to Teheran . Still 
with a volatility not unusual in the diplomacy of the East, the Khan 
G 
