the humour to hide his talent under a bushel, his brain was no sooner delivered of this conceit than he despatched it to Rome for the amusement of his friends.
Being now placed upon the margin of the Caspian, he very naturally desired to examine the appearance of its shores and waters; but embarking for this purpose in a fishing-boat with Maani, who, having passed her life in Mesopotamia, had never before seen the sea, her sickness and the fears produced in her mind by the tossing and rolling of the bark among the waves quickly put an end to the voyage. He ascertained, however, from the pilots of the coast, that the waters of this sea were not deep; immense banks of sand and mud, borne down into this vast basin by the numerous rivers which discharge themselves into it, being met with on all sides; though it is probable, that had they ventured far from shore they would have found the case different. Fish of many kinds were plentiful; but owing, perhaps, to the fat and slimy nature of the bottom, they were all large, gross, and insipid.
The shah was just then at Asshraff, a new city which he had caused to be erected, and was then enlarging, about six perasangs, or leagues, to the east of Ferhabad. Pietro, anxious to be introduced to the monarch, soon after his arrival wrote letters to the principal minister, which, together with others from the vicar-general of the Carmelite monks at Ispahan, he despatched by two of his domestics; and the ministers, according to his desire, informed the shah of his presence at Ferhabad. Abbas, who apparently had no desire that he should witness the state of things at Asshraff, not as yet comprehending either his character or his motives, observed, that the roads being extremely bad, the traveller had better remain at Ferhabad, whither he himself was about to proceed on horseback in a day or two. Pietro, whose vanity prevented his perceiving the shah's
