On the whole, the climate, with its many variations, may be considered salubrious and favourable to life. Its inhabitants certainly are physically amongst the finest of the human race, notwithstanding the inferior fare and barbarous mode of life that are the lot of a large proportion of them, in Afghanistan particularly. In this country the signs of departed prosperity and plenty are everywhere met with. From Ghazni westward, all along the valleys of the Tarnak and the Helmand, down to the basin of Sistan, the whole country is covered with the ruins of former cities, obliterated canals, and deserted cultivation—all assigned to the devastation of the Tartars under Changhiz and Tymúr in the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. The country has never recovered the havoc created by these curses of the human race. Since the destruction of the Arab rule overthrown by them, the country has known no stable government, and has been a stranger to peace, order, and prosperity alike. But it has within itself all the material elements of prosperity. What it wants are a firm government and a just rule. With these once more established over it, there is no reason why the country should not again recover its former state of prosperity and plenty. Its mountains contain a store of unexplored treasure, and its plains an only half-developed wealth. Of its inhabitants I need add little here, as to describe them fully would fill a volume. Suffice it to say, that those of Persia and Afghanistan alike contain representatives of various Tartar races thrown into this region by the successive waves of invasion from the north, as well as representatives of earlier known peoples pushed on into it from the south-west, mixed up with the ancient inhabitants of the land. Thus in Persia, with the ancient inhabitants, who are mostly settled in the large towns and cities, are found various tribes of Mughals, Turks, and Kurds, together with Arabs, Armenians, and Jews. A fourth of the population, which may be estimated at six millions, consists of wandering tribes, generically known as _ilyát_, a term which signifies “the tribes,” and corresponds with the _úlús_ of the Afghans. In the _ilyát_ are comprised all sorts of tribes, Arab and Ajam, that is to say, of Arab origin and of Persian or foreign origin, or, in other words, tribes who have come into the country at different times from the west and from the north.