248 
CLIMATE AT TABREEZ. 
to the inconvenience of reaching the gates when they are closed. 
Hence they must stay without, till morning. And during the 
inclement season, at opening the gates, very often a terrible 
scene of death unfolds itself close to the threshold; old and 
young, animals and children, lying one lifeless heap. But the 
particular instance I would now recount, relates to a solitary 
traveller, who had performed a long journey on his own horse; 
a member of their families, to which these people are eminently 
attached. When he arrived at Tabreez, the ingress was already 
barred. The night was one of the severest which had been 
known ; and the poor man, to save himself from the fatal effects 
he too surely anticipated, pierced his faithful horse with his 
dagger, and ripping up its body, thrust himself into it; in the 
vain hope of the warmth, which might remain, preserving his 
own vital heat till the morning. But in the morning, when the 
gates were opened, he was found frozen to death in this horrible 
shroud. 
For myself, I had long been sufficiently aware of the dangers 
of such exposures, not to risk the casualties of Tabreez, beyond 
the ordinary occasions; but some of their threats cannot be 
escaped, by any refuge. In short, one evening, when the cold 
was at sixteen of Reaumur, and while I was sitting after dinner, 
for the first time in my life I experienced the shock of an earth¬ 
quake. Remembering that I was at Tabreez, and that the city 
had been twice swallowed up on a similar warning, I did not 
feel the convulsion in the ground, nor my own sensations, very 
agreeable. But after rocking the house with a violent motion 
for a few moments, the shock ceased, by its cause rolling away 
with a hollow noise, like distant thunder. 
Towards the end of February, Abbas Mirza arrived at his 
