Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1840 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER VII. Arrival at Bushire--Stay there--Description of that City and its late Ruler--Karak--The importance of its position considered --Approach Busrah--Description of Khan--Busrah--Its Inhabitants--Its Rulers and Government. We approached the Persian coast without incident. It consists principally of grey, calcareous cliffs, often rising most abruptly to a majestic height, and exhibiting on its face narrow horizontal ledges of a darker hue, projecting so as to resemble the buttresses, columns, &c. of a building. Other vertical portions obstruct the course of the sun's rays, and fling their shadows on the face of the hill, so that with the position of the sun, they are, throughout the day, constantly varying their form and outline. The appearance of Bushire from seaward is that of a narrow whitened strip on a low projecting front. Brown and yellow sand, or grey clay and rock, meet the eye in every direction, unenlivened by the smallest portion of vegetation and trees: I am therefore not sur ASPECT OF PERSIA. 131 prised that the traveller arriving from India, with the comparative richness and verdure of its shores fresh in his memory, should feel sickened and disappointed as he gazes on the monotonous aspect Persia wears, the more so if he come fraught with the gorgeous paintings of that country from her poems, or preconceived opinions imbibed from earlier writers, who, as much bewildered by the first glitter of any bauble, bearing, amidst such a scene of wretchedness, any approach to magnificence, join with the natives in exhausting the language of hyperbole and eulogium in its praise. This, however, is no bad foretaste of the shock he will receive on landing. As he enters through a dirty portal, on either side of which some...