ASPECT OF THE COUNTRY. 
69 
lage seen from afar; or a distant view of the broken massive 
arches of a lonely caravansary, surrendered to the wild animals 
of the waste ; being memorials that human footsteps once were 
there, are sights of welcome to the cheerless traveller, way- 
wearied by such unvaried scenes of desert-solitariness. Besides 
such really melancholy sources of the ennui which so often 
accompanies the European through these burning tracts, is the 
unchanging serenity of the sky. Day after day, nay, month after 
month passes, and not a film is seen on its dazzling surface ; 
not a cloud, even light as the thinnest vapour, varies the tower¬ 
ing summits of the mountains by its fleecy shroud, nor tinges 
the vale beneath with its flitting shadow. In vain we look here, 
tor those sweet concealments of nature, which at times hide 
her beauties in a veil; or those sublime mysteries, which 
give infinitude to grandeur, by the occasional darkness in 
\ 
which she envelopes it. At no season of the year, in this 
southern part of Persia, can we see the storm gathering in the 
heavens; nor the thirsty earth opening its bosom to receive the 
milder shower, pouring abundance and beauty in its bland re¬ 
freshment. In fact, I have not seen a single drop of rain since 
the morning of my quitting Teheran; and dew seems equally 
interdicted. I have often thought, while panting through this 
waveless sea of shadeless heat, that if those of my countrymen 
who indulge themselves in murmurs against our cloudy, humid 
climate, were only to be transplanted hither for one summer- 
journey, they might find a parallel example to the unhappy 
lover of riches, who obtained the object of his passion to so 
grievous an extent, that whatever he touched became gold ; for, 
wherever they go here, they would meet dryness, and cloudless, 
fervent sunshine. 
