TABRIZ TO ARZ-ROUM. 
m 
landscapes that we found in Persia. The clienar is really a delight¬ 
ful tree; its bole is of a fine white and smooth bark, and its foliage, 
which grows in a tuft at the summit, is of a bright green. Those in 
the garden had not attained their full growth. Their trunks are every 
where carved with the invocation of “ Ya Ali proceeding probably 
from the ecstacies of those, who visit this little Persian paradise. 
Khoi is surrounded with a wall, and with towers of a different con¬ 
struction to any which we had remarked in other fortified towns of 
Persia. They are triangular in front, with a species of connecting 
work behind them. There are four gates, which are of stone, and very 
superior to most of those that I had noticed elsewhere. Within the 
walls are twenty mosques and six baths. There are said to be ten 
thousand houses, and a population of fifty thousand persons, of which 
the larger proportion are Armenians. The Mussulmans live in a parish 
or MahalS of their own. The territory is so extremely fertile, that 
Khoi, with the surrounding villages, pays annually to the public treasure 
the sum of one hundred thousand tomauns. Khoi is much warmer, 
from its local situation, than Tabriz. Roses here were in full flower, 
whereas a little opening bud was reckoned a rarity at Tabriz ; and 
probably in twenty days from the date of our visit, the plain lost its 
verdure, and assumed the beautiful gilding of a ripe corn-field. 
Six fursungs South from Khoi is an equally large and populous town 
called Salmas; where, as I afterwards learnt at Arz-roum, are “ sculp- 
“ tured rocks and many ruins.” My informer added, that one of the sub¬ 
jects represented two men, of whom one, looking over his left shoulder, 
pointed with his hand to a spot which the people of the neighbourhood 
affirm to contain a hidden treasure, though they admit that the deposit 
has escaped all research. 
4th of June, 1809- The Prince had ordered four men to attend us 
into the Turkish territories ; and as they did not reach us at Khoi, we 
should probably have awaited their arrival there, if I had not resisted 
such an arrangement, declaring that it would be better to advance one 
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