608 
RETURN TO TABREEZ. 
passing the salt stream, we again had the pleasure of entering 
the gates of Tabreez. 
After the sojourn of nearly another month in the capital of 
Abbas Mirza, the time arrived for my departure home; and by 
the way of Constantinople. In that track I should accomplish 
my wish of visiting many spots in Armenia, interesting to the 
historian and the antiquary; and thence proceed through other 
countries of past celebrity, though, as to political existence, at 
present in most oblivious slumber. My dispositions were soon 
made : and the first being to disencumber myself of my Asiatic 
train, consisting of horses, mules, and the whole train of their 
et-cetera, the next was, to engage an able guide to the Bosphorus, 
capable of supplying the place of them all. Such a personage 
luckily presented himself in the shape of one of three janissaries, 
who had brought letters from the Grand Vizier of the Sultan to 
the prime minister of the Shah; and I lost no time in making a 
bargain with him for the required service. I was to pay him 
1800 piastres; for which he was to furnish me with horses 
for myself, attendants, and baggage, (with provisions besides,) 
from the Persian frontier, to the gates of the Ottoman capital. 
My attendants were now reduced to my only surviving Russian 
servant, (who, I believe I mentioned before, had rejoined me 
from Shiraz quite convalescent,) and my secretary Sedak Beg; 
whom his royal master would not allow me to leave behind till 
he had seen me safe on a European shore. My poor Tcherkas- 
sian horse, who had carried me so faithfully from the mountains 
of Caucasus, to over half the alps of Persia, had ended his labours 
with his life, at Tabreez; and I acknowledge to more than one 
tear, when I saw his noble limbs, so often tugged to the utmost 
