The village of _Ispahanek_ is situated just at the foot of a range of hills which screen the extent of the great city from our view. It is now reduced to a small fort, in which its population is immured. The plain is well irrigated by dikes cut from the _Zaiande-rood_, a river which, in its course from the West, waters the whole country. It rises from the _Baktyar_ mountains, passes through _Ispahan_, and finally expends itself in the deserts of sand to the S.E. The Persians indeed have an idle belief founded on a more idle tradition, that it resumes its waters from the sand, constitutes the river which we crossed at _Daulakee_, and discharges itself at last into the sea at _Rohilla_: a connection as they still assert, ascertained by one of their Kings, who threw a marked board into the place of the disappearance, and found it again in the stream at _Daulakee_. Two etymologies are assigned to the name; one from _Zaiandé_, spurting, breaking from the ground, (_jaillir_;) the other, from _Zendé_, lost, alluding to its failure in the sand; the termination _rood_ in either case is, river. Like every other part of the kingdom, the country round _Ispahan_ is almost destitute of timber; and the surface is a most arid field for the researches of a botanist. The vivid rock of the mountains is lost at the point where their roots intersect the plain below. We estimated the distance from _Ispahanek_ to _Ispahan_ at two _fursungs_, or six miles. We proceeded over the hills in regular procession; the Envoy having taken every precaution that the Mission, with which he was charged from the Throne, should be received with the the fullest attention and respect. With this view it became his express object, that the Governor of the city, ABDULLAH KHAN, (son of MAHOMED HUSSEIN KHAN, the King’s Second Minister) should come out himself to meet him. As he had been led to understand that this was a point already settled, he was surprised to hear by a message which he received when he was on the road, that the Governor refused to accede to his wishes, unless he first received a letter to that effect from the Envoy himself. In consequence we made a temporary halt; and the Envoy wrote a note, stating, that although he thought himself entitled to such a mark of attention from the _Khan_ as an office of friendship only, yet, as the bearer of a letter from his master the King of England, to his Persian Majesty, he could not for a moment doubt, that the Governor would yield to that letter, the distinction he would pay to his own Sovereign.