Page:Thirty-five years in the East.djvu/80

40 living together. Great animosity prevails between these two sects in India, also on the day on which the Shias expose the Tabut ( coffin ) in procession. In Cashmere, on these occasions, the Mahomedans burn each others' houses and shawl manufactories. From Kermansha we went to Bagdad,, with a caravan carrying several embalmed dead bodies of Persians to Kerbela, their sanctuary.

Persia is a high plain, diversified by ranges of hills and deserts. It was in the month of August that we were on our journey, and the air was so bitterly cold on the morning of our setting out, that our very teeth chattered ; I recollected that at home they call these the dog-days. We arrived at Bagdad, where M. De Turk left me, as he was resolved to return to Paris by land via Tocat and Constantinople, in order to take with him some Arabian horses ; a speculation, by the way, which proved by no means lucrative. A short time after his leaving me, I received some good news from Lahore, through a Persian who had been in the service of General Avitabile, which induced me again to attempt going there at the commencement of the favourable season, i. e., the early part of the winter ( 1829 ). I felt the more inclined to do so, as the plague was already raging at Mosul, and the inhabitants of Bagdad were fearful that it might extend as far as their own city, a thing which occurred soon after. In the year 1828, there had been at Mosul and its environs, a famine, in consequence of the crops failing, and numerous families went down the Tigris to settle at Bagdad, selling, their children for a mere trifle, owing to the want of means to support them. I myself saw a beautiful Christian girl purchased for twenty grush ( four shillings ). Scarcely had I left Bagdad when the plague broke out, and this scourge was followed by an inundation. A war, previously noticed, also broke out, during which Dohud Pasha was conducted as a prisoner to Constantinople,

My only companion was a faithful servant, called Antun,a Christian, whom I brought with me from Bagdad, and with whom, after having passed through Bassora, and Moscat, I arrived at Bender-Karatshi in Sind. From Karatshi