230 
TABRIZ TO ARZ-ROUM. 
again, without any other aid than her own hands and feet, shewed how 
much she was accustomed to this sort of life. 
We sent forwards our Mehmandar to desire that tents might be 
pitched for us, because we had been advised to avoid the village on ac¬ 
count of the plague, which sometimes visits these parts. Accordingly 
we found four tents pitched for us, two of horse-hair, (the real Kara 
Khader of the Eels ), and two white tents, rude enough indeed, but so 
delightfully situated in the plain, surrounded by com fields, that we 
quite revelled in the exchange. 
We had not long taken possession of our humble encampment, when 
a storm of thunder, lightning and hail overwhelmed us, in a manner 
which completely destroyed all the comfort of our interior arrangements. 
Hail-stones fell in numbers which entirely filled every corner of our 
tent, and so large, that measuring one I found it to be an inch in 
diameter, and so strongly congealed that they lay on the ground undi¬ 
minished in size, until the sun once more broke out and dissolved them. 
The hills near us received a new covering of snow, shewing their sum¬ 
mits as the storm rolled away, in sublime grandeur. The peasants told 
us, that this weather was very common to them. Although this was 
but an ungracious beginning to a pastoral life, yet I must own that to 
me it still had so many delights compared with the confinement of houses, 
that with all the present disadvantages I would willingly prefer it to a 
residence in the towns of Persia. Among its enjoyments is that of its 
freedom from vermin, from which (particularly fleas) we had hitherto 
suffered so much; not that the people are singularly dirty, but the crea¬ 
tures are the usual productions of the place and season. A Persian 
who was conversing with us in our tent, on seeing my servant beating 
a coat with a cane to clean it of the vermin which it had collected 
at the former stage, very gravely asked, “ Pray what crime has that 
“ coat committed, that makes the Frangee beat it so?” 
June the 6th. The quantity of rain that had fallen during the 
course of the day had completely saturated the greatest part of our 
