NACKSHIVAN. 
211 
scribed. As we receded from Ararat, which Mr. Faber, (in one 
of his admirable works on these subjects,) conjectures to have 
been the site of the garden of Eden, we might suppose this to 
have been indeed the land through which our first parents were 
driven, from “ the presence of the Lord, and paradisaical abund¬ 
ance,” to a world of desolation, and of fearful creatures. For, 
all before us was dark and sterile; while a range of hills on our 
left, where not a sign of verdure appeared, wore a sort of 
brimstone-and-purple hue, arid and dismal. These hills are 
reported to be so infested with serpents, which swarm parti¬ 
cularly in the hot months of the year, that no traveller ever 
attempts to cross them. True or false these accounts, the 
place all around seemed sufficiently congenial with such in¬ 
habitants ; every where the earth was totally bare ; not a 
single herb of any kind varying its hard and rough surface ; and, 
beyond the serpent-mountains, rose other alpine regions, in still 
more broken and black forms, shooting their fractured peaks 
into a sky which was then quickly involving in clouds. 
We found our night’s lodgings at Nackshivan, the principal 
place of the small district, or government, which bears the 
same name. This little capital is in lat. 39° 12'. Formerly, it 
was a very considerable city ; but the spoliations of war have 
curtailed it in every respect, even since the time of Chardin. 
To a great extent, around its present diminished circumference, 
we find the ruins of towers, mosques, houses, &c. which were 
once within its walls. And, even in our approach fo the town, 
we had to traverse very extensive places, utterly fallen to decay, 
and without inhabitants, before we arrived at the actual ,entrance. 
Abbas the Great, when he annexed the province to his empire, 
was the chief destroyer of this city; and, since that period, it 
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