378 
A KHAN’S MANSION AT ROOM. 
corn or rice, in and about the city. The bazars, which once 
resounded with the busy hum of merchants, and extended from 
one extremity of the place to the other, now present hardly 
more than forty shops. 
The heat was intense during my short sojourn in the town ; 
and I was told that, owing to its proximity to the great salt 
desert, the summers here are absolutely insupportable. Indeed, 
the aspect of its immediate neighbourhood, would alone seem 
to account for this extraordinary furnace state of the place. Im¬ 
mense naked rocky mountains, closing it in, to the southward; 
and the scorched surface of the sandy plain, throwing its reflec¬ 
tions on the town from every other side. 
But at Room, I found, for the first time, the full advantages of 
the royal rackam. It provided me excellent quarters in the house 
of an absent Persian nobleman ; where I had every thing at my 
command, for myself and my party ; all which comforts were 
enjoyed with double relish, by comparing what we now had, 
with what we had not, in the scanty accommodations of the 
caravansaries. The apartment I inhabited was level with the 
ground, and opened into a delicious garden, full of fruit-trees 
redundant in beauty and blossom. The thick branches of the 
mulberry, the broad leaves of the fig, and the pendant foliage of 
the willow, formed a shade over the front of my saloon; while a 
musky, and yet refreshing breeze, sweeping along the flowery 
parterres into the wide window, almost made me forget I was 
then in the hottest region of Persia. Roses bloomed in abun¬ 
dance over the garden; and the servants of the house did not 
neglect to strew them profusely over the carpets of my chamber; 
as if I were equally enamoured of their sweets, with the night¬ 
ingale, who at that time —* 
