SHIRAZ. Entry into Shiraz—Gaiety of Shirazis of both sexes—Public promenade—Different from the rest of Persians—Shiraz wine—Early lamb—Weights: their variety—Steelyards—Local custom of weighing—Wetting grass—Game—Wild animals—Buildings—Ornamental brickwork—Orange-trees—Fruits in bazaar—Type of ancient Persian—Ladies’ dress—Fondness for music—Picnics—Warmth of climate—Diseases—The traveller Stanley—His magazine rifle and my landlord’s chimney—Cholera—Great mortality—We march out and camp—Mysterious occurrence—Life in a garden—The “Shitoor-gooloo”—Bear and dog fight—The bear is killed. After a fifteen days’ march over desolate plains without any sign of vegetation save sparse gardens round some few of the villages and the green valley of Yezdicast (or Yzedcast as the natives call it), the view of Shiraz is certainly grand and pleasing. Suddenly, after a twenty-mile march from the last stage, the greater portion of which was between rocky hills with nothing to please the eye save a little turf and a few straggling trees around the tiny stream of beautifully cool water known throughout the east as the Ab-i-Rookhni, and alluded to by Moore as the “Rookhnabad,” the vast plain of Shiraz bursts upon one’s view with the garden-surrounded city at one’s feet. Of course distance lends enchantment, and it looks so clean and so cool, particularly after fifteen days’ marching, that a strong contrast is presented to most Persian towns whose mud walls as a rule are seen from afar. Shiraz is, however, as I said, embowered in gardens and cultivation. On the right, the Bagh-i-No, or New Garden; on the left, the Bagh-i-Jahn-i-ma, the Garden of my Soul, full of cypresses, which give, from their peculiar deep green, a coolness to the scene very rare in Persia; little oases of garden can be seen in the well-cultivated and smiling plain beyond the whitish city, and within the walls are the palaces of the Governor with their gardens full of trees, and numerous large private houses whose gardens are ornamented by huge planes. The green swamps of Karabagh, to which Shiraz probably owes its unhealthiness, bound the view; but over the mist that hangs above them tower the dark purple mountains that bound the Shiraz valley.