I 
TEHERAN TO TABRIZ. 255 
ran off as fast as he could. In a little time after we heard his compa¬ 
nions cry out, “ they are Roos,” (or Russians), a report which, of 
course, he had spread abroad in his village, to the fear of all the 
inhabitants. 
The name of the villages, according to his intelligence, were, Kenish , 
distant two fiirsungs, N. 10 W.; Akchegan, one fur sung and a half, 
N. 60 W.; Ash-hasar , N. 40 W.; and Alan gay a > two fiirsungs v N. 
30 W. All this plain is under the jurisdiction of Casvin; I should think 
it about thirty miles in breadth, but a haze over the country might de¬ 
ceive me. The mountains to the right are here diminished to hills; 
and, joining the Southern mountains on a bearing of S. 40 W. terminate 
the plain of Casvin. On the plain we saw the houpe , partridges, and 
two deer, with many flocks of sheep. Siah Dehan has about five hun¬ 
dred houses. The inhabitants complain of a great scarcity of water; 
and, though their village is surrounded by gardens, they expect altoge¬ 
ther but miserable crops. They told us, with much warmth, of the 
injustice with which another village had appropriated the water of Siah 
Dehan to their own use, by turning the course of the Kanauts. We 
were lodged in the best house that the place could afford, and had a 
barber to wait on us. This custom of making the barber the Homme 
d’Affaires is common to the villages around. 
12th. We went from Siah Dehan to Nouri, a place situated at the 
end of the plain of Casvin , and the first in the Bolouk of Hamze. The 
distance is called six fiirsungs but from the time (seven hours) that we 
were on our horses, I should reckon it at twenty-five miles. As we set 
off at midnight I did not distinguish much on either side, till the break 
of day, when I discovered several very pretty villages, on the hills and 
near the side of the road to the left. The plain had here narrowed to a 
breadth of about three miles: the hills to the right were quite diminu¬ 
tive, and those to the left were decreasing in their height. The bearing 
of Nouri from Siah Dehan may be about W.; this is a guess, for at night 
I could only judge by the position .of the stars, and in the day my 
