VALE OF OUJON. 
21 
the back of my horse, to consider; but it is not improbable; and 
the new images it presented to my mind, increased the interest 
of the prospect. The now deserted vale, or at least abandoned 
to the wandering tribes alone, lay in luxuriant wildness at the 
foot of the mountain. The tall rank herbage grew in deep 
green masses over the marshy soil; and where the water was not 
entirely mantled with weeds, its clear-flowing stream glittering 
through the waving foliage, or expanding in bright mirror into 
those fatal, fathomless pools, tracked the whole valley with 
brilliant lines of that feature in a Persian landscape which is most 
delightful, because most refreshing. The hills around exhibited 
every variety of form ; rugged, beetling, towering, and romantic. 
There was the haunt of the gour and the antelope; and, 
stretching far to the south-west, these rocky barriers opened 
again into a still more extensive plain, spreading onward in broad 
magnificence, The nearer vale, which then lay directly under 
my own eye, offered a succession of picturesque objects to my 
pencil. The castellated hill, and ruined caravansary, with all 
the wild combinations of the Eelauts; their encampments on 
the banks of the many waters ; their horses, and flocks and herds 
feeding; themselves strolling about, or sitting at their tent-doors; 
and the well-armed and simply-clad Asiatic figures of our native 
military escort, completing the romantic grandeur of the view, 
as they slowly proceeded up the side of the mountain. This 
pass is extremely rocky and narrow; and the road becomes 
inconveniently compressed, between the higher acclivities of the 
mountains. Our course, though winding, in general bore north 
45° east, on a gradual ascent; and through so solitary a wilder¬ 
ness, that during two hours’ travelling we did not meet a living 
being. At the end of that time we came out on a fine upland 
