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 and is extremely dry; occasionally, however, an epidemic makes its appearance, and at one blow does the work which in other places is scattered over years. In 1846 the cholera was fatal to between seven and eight thousand of the inhabitants. This city surrendered to the Affghans, who, on entering it, set on foot a general massacre of the people; the bodies of the victims were interred in long lines of vaults on the margin of the ditch, and after the lapse of a hundred and twenty years, these vaults were opened, and it was observed by an English traveller that the clothes in which the bodies had been buried still clung undecayed round the skeletons, affording a proof of the extreme dryness of the climate and the soil. The districts of Yezd are small and thinly populated, owing to the encroachments of the desert and the scarcity of water. The soil of the finest district of the province that of Ardekan is said to yield from thirty to sixtyfold of grain in return for high cultivation. Wheat and barley are the staple crops; and fruits of numerous descriptions, including nectarines, grapes and cherries, dates, melons and pomegranates of exquisite quality, are produced in the gardens. The plain of Bafk possesses large groves of palm-trees. Here, as in every part of Persia, the mineral productions of the country have excited little or no attention. The only mine now worked is one of lead at Zerekan, the daily produce of which is said to amount to between seven and thirteen hundred pounds' weight, the smallest of which measures is valued at Yezd at about ten tomans, or rather less than five pounds sterling. The deserts surrounding Yezd afford shelter and subsistence to wild