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RUINED CASTLE. 
make brick: and behold thy servants are beaten : but the fault is in thine 
(mn people. Exodus, v. 16. 
Part of the labourers were occupied in treading mortar, part in bring¬ 
ing clay, and several were employed at the brick-kilns, which had been 
erected in the immediate vicinity of the building, for baking the bricks. 
The Persians, like all Asiatics, have no invention, but build their 
cities upon one plan. First they make the palace, then the maidan or 
square, then the mosque, and then the bazars. All these buildings were 
successively to be erected; and Suliman Mirza, one of the King’s 
younger sons, was then to be installed as the Governor, with an appanage 
of several of the surrounding villages. Such is the charm of a jingle of 
words to the ear of a Persian, that it is more than probable, that the 
fitness of seeing Suliman Mirza, Governor of Sulimanieh, was the 
principal reason that gave rise to the project of building a town. 
Immediately on passing the bridge over the Karaj, on the right hand, 
are to be seen the ruins of a fort, which stand upon an eminence, and 
which a man who was passing by called a castle of the Guebres. All’ 
ruins for which the people of the country cannot account, are attributed 
to the Guebres; in the same manner as in Turkey, they are attributed 
to the Giaours. There is every probability that the last word is a cor¬ 
ruption of the first, which is now only applied to fire-worshippers in 
Persia, but in Turkey to infidels in general. From this eminence is 
to be seen a very beautiful vale, green and watered by the Karaj, which 
issuing from the mountains, meanders in an easy course, as far as the 
bridge, where it is straightened in its channel and becomes more rapid 
and turgid. Its source is in a mountain called Koh Aureng Rudbar, 
about five fursungs distant. As it descends into the plain its bed ex¬ 
pands, and its waters are drained off into different channels for the 
purposes of irrigation. 
On the desert before we reached Casvin, in the grey of the morning, 
we gave chase to two wild-asses, which the Persians call Gour khur, 
but which had so much the speed of our horses, that when they had 
got at some distance, they stood still and looked behind at us snorting 
with their noses in the air, as if in contempt of our endeavours to catch 
