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 with menaces, which he seems to have uttered for the purpose of enhancing his own dignity in the estimation of the multitude, departed, leaving them to enact the spies at their discretion.

Being now left in undisturbed possession of their hut, and there still remaining some hours of daylight, they prevailed upon their host, by dint of a small bribe, to show them the citadel, situated in the loftiest and most deserted part of the city. Returning from thence, they were met by the beadles of the town, who conducted them, with their beasts and baggage, to the public caravansary, though their host and guide had denied the existence of any such building; and while this ancient deceiver was hurried off before the magistrates, our travellers sat down to supper and some excellent wine. Next morning Kæmpfer issued forth, disguised as a groom, to examine the remainder of the city, while his companions loaded their beasts, and, the keeper of the caravansary being absent, slipped out of the city, and waited until he should join them at a little distance upon the road. Having escaped from this inhospitable place, they proceeded to examine the small peninsula of Okesra, a tongue of land about three leagues in length, and half a league in breadth, which projects itself into the Caspian to the south of Baku. This spot, like the Phlegræan fields, appears to be but a thin crust of earth superimposed upon an internal gulf of liquid fire, which, escaping into upper air through a thousand fissures, scorches the earth to dust in some places; in others, presents to the eye a portion of its surface, boiling, eddying, noisome, dark, wrapped in infernal clouds, and murmuring like the fabled waters of hell. Here and there sharp, lofty cones of naked rocks, composed, like the summits of the Caucasus, of conchylaceous petrifactions, shoot up from the level of the plain, and on the northern part of the peninsula are sometimes divided by cultivated valleys. On the summit