42 
PERSIAN POLITICS. 
passage, serving as a streetj of about eight feet in breadth, are to be 
seen, instead of our closely shut shops, with windows gaily decked. 
Here the vender sits, surrounded with his wares. In a country where 
there is so little apparent security of property, it is surprising how a 
man so easily exposes his goods to the pilfer of rogues. Comparisons 
might be made without end; but however distressing the transition 
from great civilisation to comparative barbarity may be, yet it is certain 
that first impressions soon wear off, and that the mind receives a new 
accession of feelings, adapted precisely to the situation in which it is 
placed. 
It may be supposed, that in the remote part of the world on which 
we had just landed, there could be little in the daily occurrences of life 
to interest or agitate the mind ; yet such is the Persian character, that 
we had scarcely been arrived a week before we were involved in dis¬ 
agreeable discussions. 
When I was last at Bushire, the hereditary government of the Arab 
Sheikhs was abolished. Mahomed Nebee Khan, from having been ori¬ 
ginally a scribe, and successively a shopkeeper, a merchant, an Ambas¬ 
sador, and a Governor of Bushire, at length was raised to the Vizuaret 
of the province of Pars, in which situation we now found him. By his 
influence he had established his brother, (who had also been a mer¬ 
chant) as the permanent Governor of Bushire, and had succeeded to 
ruin the fortunes of Sheikh Naser, its former Governor, and even 
almost to extirpate the Damook tribe, of which that chief was the head. 
Mahomed Nebee, and our friend the Persian Ambassador, were bitter 
enemies; and their enmity, notwithstanding the thousand protestations 
on both sides, of unalterable friendship, soon broke out into open hosti¬ 
lity. Some delay in the attentions due from the Prince of Shiraz to 
the English Ambassador having taken place, Mirza Abul Hassan Khan 
immediately took advantage of it to lay the whole blame on Mahomed 
Nebee, and to pass off all his own rage as that of the Ambassador’s. 
We remained encamped at Bushire until the 27th March, during 
