of this wine, one of the most agreeable articles in his "Amœnitates," there is a kind of bacchic energy and enthusiasm, a rhapsodical affectation of sesquipedalian words, which would seem to indicate that even the remembrance of this oriental nectar has the power of elevating the animal spirits. But whatever were the delights of Shiraz, it was necessary to bid them adieu; and inwardly exclaiming with the calif, "How sweetly we live if a shadow would last!" he turned his back upon Mosellay and the Rocknabad, and pursued his route towards Gombroon.
Here, if he was pleased with contrasts, he could not fail to be highly gratified; for no two places upon earth could be more unlike than Shiraz and Gombroon. It was the pestilential air of this detestable coast that had deprived Della Valle of his Maani, and reduced Chardin to the brink of the grave; and Kæmpfer had not been there many months before he experienced in his turn the deadly effects of breathing so inflamed and insalubrious an atmosphere, from which, in the summer season, even the natives are compelled to fly to the mountains. Though no doubt the causes had long been at work, the effect manifested itself suddenly in a malignant fever, in which he lay delirious for several days. When the violence of this disorder abated, it was successively followed by a dropsy and a quartan ague, through which dangerous and unusual steps, as Dr. Scheuchzer observes, he recovered his health, though not his former strength and vigour. Admonished by this rough visitation, he now had recourse to those means for the restoration of his strength which a more rigid prudence would have taught him to put in practice for its preservation, and removed with all possible expedition into the mountainous districts of Laristân.
On the 16th of June, 1686, at least six weeks after every other sane person had fled from the place, Kæmpfer set out from Gombroon, sitting in a pannier
