ATTUSH KOU, OR FIRE-HILL. 
437 
mass below is one mouldering succession of ruinous houses, walls, 
mosques, and shapeless structures, which had formerly been the 
mansions of the nobility. They lay, a vast grey heap ; but agree¬ 
ably broken to the eye, and shaded, in a variety of directions, by 
groups, or lines of lofty poplars, walnut, chinar, and fruit-trees ; 
which still flourish amongst the ruins of the human habitations, 
to which they had once made part of their gardens. 
On turning towards the west, we then indeed see the last 
rays of the setting sun of Ispahan still above the horizon, 
glittering on the burnished pinnacles, sparkling fountains, and 
gay verdure of the Heste Beheste, and Chaher Bagh. Several 
miles beyond, but nearly in the same direction, and yet within 
the wide circumference of the city boundary, we observed an 
insulated hill, rising high, in a conical shape, and forming a very 
conspicuous object amongst the crumbling mounds at its foot. 
It is called the Attush kou , or fire-hill. On its summit are some 
fragments of a building, the original constructors of which the 
people around declare to have been the devil, or evil spirits. 
Indeed, it is the easy fashion of this country to account for 
every thing, about whose origin the speaker is ignorant, by 
attributing it to daemon agency. And this blind superstition 
is no where so often exhibited, as when inquiries are made 
respecting the founders of some of the finest architectural 
remains, which, from ingenuity, workmanship, and taste, must 
have been the erection of the most enlightened days of the 
empire ; and then we see the wandering natives shake their 
heads, and gravely ascribe these proofs of their fathers’ greatness, 
to the handicraft of the arch-enemy of mankind. But, as this 
Attush kou is an artificial mount, and stands close to the quarter 
of the city where the Guebres, and particularly those who 
