they emerged into daylight, like Æneas and his companion from the mouth of hell.
Departing from the ruins of Persepolis on the 19th of February, he next day arrived at Shiraz, where he amused himself for three days in contemplating the waters of the Roknebad and the bowers of Mosellay. In proceeding from this city to Bander-Abassi, on the Persian Gulf, he had to pass over Mount Jarron by the most difficult and dangerous road in all Persia. At every step the travellers found themselves suspended, as it were, over tremendous precipices, divided from the abyss by a low wall of loose stones, which every moment seemed ready to roll of their own accord into the depths below. The narrow road was blocked up at short intervals by large fragments of rock, between which it was necessary to squeeze themselves with much pains and caution. However, they passed the mountain without accident, and on the 12th of March arrived at Bander-Abassi.
This celebrated port, from which insufferable heat and a pestilential atmosphere banish the whole population during summer, is at all times excessively insalubrious, all strangers who settle there dying in the course of a few years, and the inhabitants themselves being already old at thirty. The few persons who remain to keep guard over the city during summer, at the risk of their lives, are relieved every ten days; during which they suffer sufficiently from the heat, the deluges of rain, and the black and furious tempests which plough up the waters of the gulf, and blow with irresistible fury along the coast.
Though the eve of the season of death was drawing near, Chardin found the inhabitants of Bander in a gay humour, feasting, drinking, and elevating their sentiments and rejoicing their hearts with the heroic songs of Firdoosi. Into these amusements our traveller entered with all his heart—the time
