284 
KURUMDARA. — ABHAR. 
forward; and at four o’clock in the afternoon, arrived at Kurum- 
dara, our place of rest; having travelled a distance of seven 
farsangs and a half. 
Kurumdara is a small respectable town, surrounded by several 
villages, little inferior to it in extent and neatness. A clear 
stream, formed, a short way from the town, by the union of 
numerous beautiful rills trickling from the adjacent hills, flows 
through it; and then taking a course along the valley, increases 
its waters by other streams, till, I am told, it falls into the Ivizzi- 
Jouzan; the Gozen, as I have remarked before, of the Scrip¬ 
tures. 
The air being milder, in this more southern, sheltered region, 
we started next morning from Kurumdara, at six o’clock ; on a 
road south-east, along a spacious valley, which soon opened to 
a breadth of six or eight miles. 
After a march of rather more than an hour, we came in sight 
of the village of Abhar, but left it far to the right. It is the 
regular halting-place for travellers, between Tabreez and the 
capital; and was one of the noted cities of old Persia. Its 
mosques, and other ruins, bear clear and extensive memorials of 
mussulman antiquity ; but Abhar is supposed to have a yet more 
ancient origin, as one of the cities on the river Gozen, in which 
the Jews were planted, on their removal from Jerusalem. 
Every hour that we advanced, the cold, together with the 
snow, gradually disappeared ; and while all enjoyed this change, 
so immediate on our entrance into the country of the captivity, 
[ could not but remember the beautiful words with which the 
poet of Israel hails the approach of the vernal season, and feel 
with him, that “ the winter was past, and the spring near at hand, 
when the flowers should appear on the earth, and the time of the 
