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precipitous cliff, and accompanied by colossal sculptures, besides the pyrea previously alluded to, and which the natives designate as the Kaaba of Terdusht, and the Nokarah Кhaneh of Jemshid. We made several vain attempts to get into these tombs. They are four in number, and above them are sculptured designs similar to what are observed in the Tucht i Jemshid. At the foot of the tombs are also several bas-reliefs, but these are all Sassanian. In one, Ormusd presents to Ardashir (Artaxerxes) a ring with streamers, the emblem of royalty: two inscriptions, the one in Pehlvic, the other in Greek, leave no doubt on the subject. The second represents a lady receiving the same present from a king. A third, is a king on horseback, holding a prisoner by the hand, while another supplicates before him. This is Sapor I. and the unfortunate Valerian.

Not far from this spot is another place, called Nakchi Rejib, where there are other sculptures, and indeed all the rocks of the neighbourhood teem with remnants of antiquity, in which we observe attempts to preserve in more recent times, as in the Sassanian epoch, the original predilection which belonged to the relics of a more remote antiquity, by engrafting upon them the successes and the triumphs of later ages, but none of the illustrations of which come up to the originals.

In the evening we crossed the plain of Merdusht, to visit the village of Bund Emir, and where the Khan's son came out to meet us on horseback, from which he dismounted at Colonel Shee's approach, and then mounted again. At the entrance of the village the peasants were assembled to greet our party; and at half-past one in the morning, a repast was served upon the roof of the Khan's house, after partaking of which we started, travelling till the sun became too hot, when we sheltered ourselves beneath an overhanging rock, and smoked, chatted, and dosed away the time till evening came on, when we mounted again. On approaching Shiraz, we were met by a regimental colonel, who had come out in search of Shee, and who communicated the unpleasant intelligence that the Mahmud Sunni—the followers of Walli Khan, whom the Colonel had been three years in subjecting, and whose chief he had taken prisoner the year before, in a castle, from which part of the inhabitants, rather than surrender, had thrown themselves down a perpendicular cliff—were again in arms, and that the road between Shiraz and Bushire was shut up.

We arrived at Shiraz before sunrise, and found the town in a state of great excitement; a number of khans had been arrested, the guards were doubled, and everything was bustle and spirit-stirring, while hosts of horsemen were hurrying from various directions towards the city—their gay accoutrements and burnished arms glittering in the first rays of a rising sun, as they issued from the cloud of dust that enveloped their galloping steeds.