which I threw on the ground with an air of great fatigue, and of having done a meritorious service 'Ay,' says he, 'while I, like a true believer, have been performing my duty to God, and you toiling to procure us firing for this cold night, some hardened kaufir, who I wish may never drink again in this world, has plundered the pittance of water which was set apart for my ablutions.' He then made strict search among our neighbours for the perpetrator of this robbery, as he termed it; but receiving no satisfactory information, he deliberately delivered him or them to the charge of every devil in the infernal catalogue, and went grumbling to sleep."
In this way they proceeded until, having escaped from the deserts of Khorasan, they entered the mountainous, woody, and more thickly-peopled province of Mazenderan, the inhabitants of which Forster found more civilized and humane than the Khorasans. On the night of the 24th of January, while pushing on through the forests, most of the passengers beheld a star with an illuminated tail, which, from its form and quick motion, our traveller supposed to be a comet. In several of the woods through which their road now lay, no vestige of a habitation or signs of culture appeared, excepting a few narrow slips of land at the bases of the hills. But as they proceeded the valleys soon "opened, and exhibited a pleasing picture of plenty and rural quiet. The village all open and neatly built, the verdant hills and dales, encircled by streams of delicious water, presented a scene that gave the mind ineffable delight. The air, though in winter, was mild, and had the temperature of an English climate in the month of April." Frazer, the able author of the Kuzzilbash, has given in his travels a no less favourable idea of the rich scenery of Mazenderan.
In a few days he arrived at Mushed Sir, on the Caspian Sea, where he was hospitably received and entertained by the Russian merchants established
