ZERGOON. 
71 
The parable of the Pharisee and the publican, of the xviiith of Luke, 
10th to 13th verse, will be more clearly understood >by what has been 
above mentioned. Our Saviour in bringing these two characters toge¬ 
ther, appears to have chosen them as making the strongest contrast be¬ 
tween what, in the public estimation, were the extremes of excellence 
and villainy. According to Josephus^, the sect of the Pharisees was 
the most powerful among the Jews; and from what has been said 
of the rahdars, it may perhaps be explained why the Pharisee, in 
praying to God, should make extortioners” and “ the unjust” almost 
synonimous terms with publicans; because we have seen, that from 
the peculiar office of the rahdar he is almost an extortioner by 
profession, 
Zergoon is called five fursungs from Shiraz, which I calculated as six¬ 
teen miles by the road. I took a bearing from it of a snowy peak in 
the distant mountains, bearing N. 42° W. called the Koh Shish Peer, 
near which are some celebrated springs of water. The scarcity of this 
blessing in Persia makes a spring of great consequence. Ardekan is 
situated not far from the mountain, and is a town about the size of 
Zergoon, consisting of three hundred houses. Both have the reputation 
of being adad, or peopled, a word which is in Persia synonimous with 
prosperity and plenty; but to judge of the former place by what I saw 
of the latter, I should suppose it to be the abode of misery. At Zer¬ 
goon the inhabitants looked really the victims of. oppression,^—thin, 
ragged and idle; and they confirmed the misery of their outward ap¬ 
pearance by informing me, that owing to the excessive extortion of 
their governors, upwards of an hundred families had lately migrated to 
Teheran. The hatirjees or mule-drivers of the southern provinces of Per¬ 
sia (a sturdy and obstinate race) are mostly natives of Zergoon. We lodged 
in the Mehnan Khoneh^ or the guest^s house, a most miserable abode, in 
one of the rooms of which I spread my carpet, and hung a curtain be¬ 
fore the door-way, to screen me from the crowd which had collected to 
inspect me. Even in this miserable place the stranger has an asylum j 
* Book xiii. chap. 10 . 
