Page:The Travels of Ludovico di Varthema (1863).djvu/82

are less distinctly traceable. We must, of course, suppose him to have crossed over to the mainland; but how far he had penetrated into the interior when he writes: "Departing thence, I passed into Persia, and travelling for twelve days I found a city called Eri," is not specified. Nevertheless, as I see no cause to question his visit to Eri, the ancient name of Herât, and as it is tolerably certain that he could not have reached that place in the time given, we may reasonably infer either that an error has in this instance crept into the original narrative, or that Varthema dates his departure from a point which he has omitted to record. As far as his rather summary account of Herât goes,—of the city, its productions, its manufactures, and its population,—his information is perfectly correct; and that fact, taken in conjunc-
tion with a subsequent avowal that he described Samarcand by report only, may be fairly regarded as a proof of his veracity; for if he was disposed to mis-
represent in the one case, there is no reason why he should not have done so in the other.

Twenty days' march from Herât brought our tra-
veller to "a large and fine river, called Eufra," which "on account of its great size" he supposes to be the Euphrates. As he was then three days distant from Shirâz, to which city the onward road lay "to the left hand" of his Eufra, I have supposed him to have struck on the Pulwân at or near Merghâb, a little to the southward of which town there appears to be a high-
way, leading by Istakâr, to a point below the junction of the Pulwân with the Bendemir, from whence it is