TOSIA. 719 
serving those infidels! They would do better to cut their throats 
and be done with them !” 
A Christian European might travel from the Persian Gulf to 
the Araxes, without hearing such an expression from any order of 
its natives. When they do act with hostility, it is not on account 
of difference in creeds, but from a spirit of plunder, equally active 
on a caravan of their own countrymen, as against a foreign tra¬ 
veller ; and hence the merciless rage of fanaticism brings no ex¬ 
terminating principle, into their occasional attacks on road or 
mountain. 
It was six o’clock in the evening, but absolutely dark night, 
when we arrived at Tosia. The distance is called nine hours, 
but my calculation makes it twenty-seven miles. Our menzil 
had now the honour of being in a city, but no marks of antiquity 
are in or near it. The situation is a cleft of the valley, and on 
the slope of two hills approaching each other in manner of what 
we call combs in England. The city is built in this hollow and 
on its slopes, showing amongst its crowding houses the tops of 
six mosques, and as many towering minarets. The population 
is estimated at 5000. They carry on considerable manufactories 
of copper vessels, green leather, and a black stuff resembling 
camlet. 
November 22d. — Started this morning between six and seven 
o’clock; our course lay S. 50° W. The river flows about four 
miles south of the city ; but the whole intermediate country is 
separated into well cultivated fields of rice and other grain, 
appearing very European by their green hedge-rows mixed with 
fine-grown trees. As we advanced, the valley varied in width; 
and gradually losing its appearance of culture, presented in its 
stead a beautiful bloomy surface of short herbage, like that on 
