110 
SHIRAZ. 
during the ceremony of our audience; in which he had been previously 
tutored by his minister: and I very easily believe, according to the 
stories related of him, that he exchanges with eagerness these etiquettes 
of rank for the less restrained enjoyments of his power. On these he 
lavishes his revenue ; and in the costliness of a hunting equipage, the 
fantasies of dress, and the delicacies of the Harem are frittered away a 
hundred thousand tomauns a year. Young as he is, (for he is only 
nineteen) he has already a family of eight children. In his public go¬ 
vernment he is much beloved by his people; and although the 
Persians are not inclined in conversation to spare the faults of their 
superiors, of him I never heard an evil word. He has not indeed those 
sanguinary propensities, which are almost naturally imbibed in the 
possession of despotic power ; and where others cut off ears, slit noses, 
and pierce eyes, he contents himself with the administration of the more 
lenient bastinado. 
Nasr Oallah Khan is appointed by the King to remit to the 
court of Teheran any surplus revenue; an office probably neither easy 
to the Minister, nor acceptable to the Prince, whose immense and 
splendid establishments exact a very liberal proportion of the whole 
receipts of the province. In his actual service and pay the Prince has 
only a force of one thousand cavalry, of which two hundred (the quota 
furnished by the Baktiar tribe) form his body guard; but in an emer¬ 
gency he could send to the war twenty thousand horsemen. His troops 
provide their own arms and clothing, and they receive annually in pay 
forty piastres, and a daily allowance of one maun (seven pounds and a 
quarter) of barley, two inauns of straw, and a quarter of a maun of 
wheat, except in spring when their horses feed on the new herbage. 
They have further, each in his own country, for the maintenance of 
their families, a certain allotment of land, which they till and sow, and 
of which they reap the annual fruits. When a new levy is ordered, 
the head of each tribe brings forward the number which the state has 
required of him. 
4th. At about one hour before sunset, we repaired to the house of 
