Till Don Garcia made the elaborate notes from which the writer of the foregoing account derived his information, ‘nothing assured’ was known in Europe concerning these remarkable remains. Sebastian Serlio, we are told in his work on Architecture, only knew of them from ‘an uncertain and barbarous relation,’ and he has given us merely a rough drawing of the edifice, showing forty small columns with Corinthian capitals.[19] Don Garcia even complains that Gouvea could only give him a ‘confused’ account. Don Garcia brought an artist with him, and he took the best means of dissipating the obscurity in which the subject was hitherto involved by having drawings made upon the spot. The artist said he intended to copy the triumphal procession on the stairs, but he probably found the time at his disposal insufficient for this labour, for he afterwards says he actually accomplished the drawing of four of the figures, upon one of which were ‘the characters composed of little triangles in the form of a pyramid.’ But of greater importance than these was the copy Don Garcia ordered to be taken of ‘a whole line of the large inscription which is on the staircase in the centre of the triumphal procession. It is to be found on a highly polished table, four feet in height, in which the letters are deeply cut.’ We are unable to say whether these drawings appeared in the original Spanish edition, but they have not been reproduced in the French translation. Don Garcia finally reached Ispahan in 1618, where he was detained till August in the following year. His mission turned out a complete failure. One of its principal objects was to secure a monopoly of the Persian trade for Spain. Just as he reached Goa he heard that the Governor of Lara had taken Gombrun from the Portuguese. While he was in Persia, he had the mortification to find that port regularly used every year by the English to land their goods. In 1618, peace was concluded between Persia and Turkey, and the Shah was thus rendered independent of the Spanish alliance, while he was daily becoming more disposed to rely upon the English merchant fleet in the event of an open rupture with the Portuguese of Ormuz. He had always consistently opposed the concession of a monopoly to any one nation, and he now found himself sufficiently powerful to reject the demands of Spain. The discomfited Ambassador left in August 1619, and spent the winter at Ormuz in the hope of a favourable change in the aspect of affairs: and he finally reached Spain in 1622, after an adventurous voyage.