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CHAPTER XIX. 
We departed from Tabriz early in the morning of the 21st October, 
and made our first stage at the village of Serd Rood. In the same 
manner as Cyrus was attended on his departure from Media*, the Am¬ 
bassador was accompanied by Fatteh Ali Khan the Governor, for about 
two miles without the city, a ceremony, the omission of which would 
have been esteemed a mark of great negligence. 
Serd Rood, which is a large village, presents itself beautifully from 
an eminence about a mile before reaching it, and occupies the base of 
a hill, upon which are the ruins of a fort. We here found the peasants 
picking the cotton, and the berry of the castor oil, two plants, which 
in Persia are generally found in the vicinity of each other, the latter 
being sown as a sort of hedge-row around the other. They were now 
ploughing the ground ; and in some fields, the harrow, which was 
nothing more than a beam attached transversely to the pole of the 
yoke, was softening down the work of the plough. In many cases 
mere boys were directing the plough ; and where two pair of oxen were 
required, a boy sat on the front yoke to direct the cattle in their track. 
This village, although so near Tabriz, belongs to Ahmed Khan, the 
wealthy Chief of Maragha. 
From a conical hill that overlooked our camp, I took several geogra¬ 
phical bearings ; Tabriz and the red mountain over it were on my 
right, the two long mountains similar in form and soil, between the 
bases of which is the road to Nakhjuwan and Erivan, extended them¬ 
selves in front, and the distant peninsula of Shahee, which projects into 
the lake of that name, was on my left. The bed of the salt river Agi 
was visible in its course through the arid plain, almost from the place 
of its escape from the cultivated grounds around Tabriz, to its fall into 
the lake. The conformation of the plain, and the lands which environ 
* Cyropffidia, lib. i. 
0 O 
