the implacable and bloodthirsty disposition of the first Kajar Shah. It is beyond question that the city of Kerman was given up for three months to the incessant ravages and plunder of an exasperated army, which, under the sanction of its chiefs, committed the most unheard-of enormities. The wives and daughters of the citizens some of the latter being children of tender years were publicly exposed to the brutality of the soldiers in the very presence of their husbands and fathers, who were afterwards forced to receive them thus dishonoured, or to destroy them with their own hands on the spot. All the fortifications and the elegant structures with which Kerman had been beautified by the Affghans during the period of their possession of this part of Persia, were razed to the ground, and the famous city that had been the emporium of wealth, luxury and magnificence, was doomed to lie desolate for many years, to expiate the crime of having afforded a last shelter to the heroic rival of Aga Mahomed Khan.
received account that of the above-mentioned traveller and of Fraser; but I observe that Mr. Abbott, in his Notes on the Cities of Southern Persia, of which he has kindly allowed me to make use, throws some doubts upon the correctness of the story which attributes the erection of this pillar of skulls to Aga Mahomed Khan, as he could find no verification of this tale when he visited Kerman. It is to be presumed, however, that Pottinger, who travelled in that country nearly forty year's earlier, had good grounds for the statement he makes.)
