ISPAHAN. 
405 
Tims do villages, and even districts, not unfrequently become 
entirely deserted ; and, on enquiry, what inroad of Tartar or 
Turkoman had rendered the houses tenantless, and left so many 
fine tracts of land without culture, we are surprised with the 
information, that some avaricious governor, or, more likely, his 
rapacious satellites, had passed that way ; and the besom of 
destruction could not have swept surer. 
May 25 th. At two o’clock this morning, we bade adieu to our 
good host of the caravansary of Guz ; and keeping a course due 
south along the plain for a track of six; fair miles, were then 
most grievously impeded, by a road broken up in hundreds of 
places, by the fractured state of as many old water-channels ; 
while on all sides of us, we saw ruins of every description, the 
former dwelling-places of a once numerous and prosperous 
population, which had fully inhabited this finest district in the 
immediate vicinity of Ispahan: but war alone, had been the 
enemy here. When morning dawned, we discovered the long 
black line of this once great capital, as the sun rose above the 
horizon ; the countless domes and columns of the mosques her- 
came instantly distinguished, and glittering under its oblique 
rays, reminded me of the ancient metropolis of the Tzars, when 
I first saw it, in all its Asiatic splendour, at the decline of the 
year 1806 . 
Having ridden about four miles, over ground that showed, by 
many marks, how much beyond it the suburbs of the great 
capital had once extended, We arrived at the Gouch Khonah. a 
very old mosque of the early Sunnees ; at which point commences 
what is now termed the beginning of the city. After passing 
through an avenue of noble trees, we entered the long vaulted 
covered way of the bazar, under whose massy arches we travelled 
