$54 
TEHERAN TO TABRIZ. 
and accompanied us to an house, which had been once a good one, but 
was then abandoned and in ruins. Our Mehmandar had great difficulty 
to procure the refreshment that was due to us; but when at length it 
arrived, there was a supply of cooks, pots, and provisions, which would 
have satisfied an army. Casvin is almost one mass of ruins. A 
Zibzileh (an earthquake), within no distant period, threw down the 
buildings which were in the Tot tie, and made cracks in almost every 
wall. A large mosque, built by the Abbasses, has been rent in many 
places in its thick walls, and totally ruined. 
11th. The storm of thunder and rain which we had foreboded, fell in 
the evening of the preceding day, and refreshed the air which had been 
sultry, and gave us a most delightful morning. 
We left Casvin just as the morning broke at about four o'clock; and 
proceeded in a direction of S. 40 W. to Siah Delian , a village in the 
plain of Casvin , a distance of twenty miles, called six fursungs , which 
we performed in five hours. The road over this part of the plain was 
the most beautiful and the most level of any that I had seen in Persia. 
It was fine hard gravel; and the plain on each side of it was in high 
verdure, one grass plat on which many thousands of cavalry might ma¬ 
noeuvre admirably. 
The villages continued as numerous as those that we had before re- 
marked in our last day's route. They were neatly entrenched in square 
walls with towers at each angle. The wind which blew from the North¬ 
ward refreshed the air, and made it even cold: this, which is here the 
prevailing wind, is called the Baud Gagazgoon , as it blows from a little 
district of that name, composed of ten or fifteen small villages, situated 
on the N. hills. At four miles from Siah Dehan we stopped at a village 
on the side of the road called Keck. The inhabitants looked at us over 
the walls, and did not seem willing to come out to us; at last a little 
boy ventured forth: I questioned him about his own village and those 
around, but he seemed shy in giving answers ; and when he saw me 
take out my pocket-book to write down the memoranda, he asked me 
with a very suspicious face, u What are you writing there? ’ and then 
