of one of these eminences they perceived the ruins of a castle, in former times the residence of a celebrated imam, who had taken refuge in these wild scenes from the persecution of the race of Omar.
Still proceeding towards the south they arrived, in about an hour from these ruins, upon the margin of a burning field, the surface of which was strewed with a pale white sand, and heaps of ashes; while, from numerous gaping rents, rushing flames, black smoke, or bluish steam, strongly impregnated with the scent of naphtha, burst up in a singularly striking manner. When the superincumbent sand was removed, whether upon the edge of the fissures, or in any other part of the field, a light rock, porous, and worm-eaten, as it were, like pumice-stone, was discovered; which, as well as the substratum of the whole peninsula, consisted of shelly petrifactions. Here they found about ten persons occupied in different labours about the fires; some being employed in attending to a number of copper or earthen vessels, placed over the least intense of the burning fissures, in which they were cooking dinner for the inhabitants of a neighbouring village; while others were piling stones brought from other places into heaps, to be burnt into lime. Apart from these sat two Parsees, the descendants of the ancient inhabitants of Persia, beside a small wall of dry stones which they had piled up, contemplating with holy awe and veneration the fiercely ascending flames, which they regard as an emblem of the eternal God.
One of the lime-burners now came up to the travellers, and said that for a small reward he would show them a very extraordinary spectacle. When they had given him some trifle, he plucked a few threads of cotton from his garment, and twisting them upon the end of his rake, went and held them over one of the burning fissures, where they were instantly kindled. He then held the rake over another rent, from which neither flame nor smoke
