- cipal magistrate, he very fortunately found that the
affair had been properly represented to him, and that his people were not considered to have exceeded their duty. His wife, not reflecting that her masculine habits and fiery temperament were quite sufficient to account for the circumstance, now began to torment both herself and her husband because she had not yet become a mother; and supposing that in such cases wine was a sovereign remedy, she endeavoured to prevail upon Pietro, who was a water-drinker, to have recourse to a more generous beverage, offering to join with him, if he would comply, in the worship of Bacchus. Our traveller, who had already, as he candidly informs us, a small family in Italy, could not be brought to believe that the fault lay in his sober potations, and firmly resisted the temptations of his wife. With friendly arguments upon this and other topics they beguiled the length of the way, and at length arrived in Mazenderan, though Maani's passion for horsemanship more than once put her neck in jeopardy on the road. The scene which now presented itself was extremely different from that through which they had hitherto generally passed. Instead of the treeless plains or unfertile deserts which they had traversed in the northern parts of Irak, they saw before them a country strongly resembling Europe; mountains, deep well-wooded valleys, or rich green plains rapidly alternating with each other, and the whole, watered by abundant streams and fountains, refreshed and delighted the eye; and he was as yet unconscious of the insalubrity of the atmosphere.
Pietro, who, like Petronius, was an "elegans formarum spectator," greatly admired the beauty and graceful figures of the women of this province,—a fact which makes strongly against the idea of its being unhealthy; for it may generally be inferred, that wherever the women are handsome the air is good. Here and there they observed, as they moved
