As jewellers these people attain great proficiency. Any really difficult work was always brought by the native gold or silver smiths of Ispahan to be finished by an Armenian of Julfa, one Setrak. The trade of watchmaker, or rather watchmender, is almost monopolised in Persia by Armenians; and my former dispenser was a very good drug-compounder, having received his instruction when a convict in India, serving his time after committing a burglary with violence. The cemetery lies on a bare and stony plain, under a lofty hill called the Kūh Sufi. When Ispahan was the capital this plain was all under cultivation by irrigation, the remains of the canals being yet visible: here lie the inhabitants of Julfa, and also a few Europeans. Each ancient grave is marked by a huge block of stone of a cube form, the upper face being, however, generally larger than the under one. Some are nine feet long, a yard high, and two feet wide. Many of the stones have Dutch, Latin, and French inscriptions. One of these latter is the well-known one of the watchmaker to Shah Abbas the Great. “Cy gît Rodolfe” is the inscription it bears; and here lies Rodolphe, who was a great favourite of the king, Abbas the Great. He was a youth of great beauty, and the king was much attached to him. Having killed a Mahommedan after being struck by the latter, he was offered the usual choice of Islam or death. He preferred the latter; and though the king is said to have given him ample time for reflection, and to have promised him rank and wealth if he would apostatise, preferring death to dishonour, he was executed, and interred beneath this stone. It is very difficult to get at the exact details of this story, as there are many versions. It is told first by Chardin or Tavernier. Just at the entrance to the burial-ground, by crossing a ditch, over a bridge _composed of old tombstones_, one comes to the Kaweh-Khana of the Armenians, a mud building of two stories. Here in wet weather the funerals halt, and here on their return the mourners stay to partake of wine and arrack. All through Persia the habit of utilising tombstones for building bridges occurs, and is not confined to the Armenians. Ispahan, which is surrounded by huge cemeteries and intersected by many watercourses, presents many instances of these tombstone bridges.