and a half feet of rubbish had been cleared away, that the edifice had originally contained ten rows of columns of ten in each in the centre, and two rows of eight in the Portico.[187] In the beginning of the year 1841, they found themselves at Fasa, and speedily recognised that it could not compete with Murgab as the representative of Pasargadae. On their return to Shiraz, they ascertained that Baron de Bode, an attaché to the Russian embassy, had just left for Susa. When at Kermanshah, in the preceding summer, they abandoned an attempt to reach that place from the south through the defiles of Luristan. Such an enterprise would probably not have been very easy even to travellers much better suited to deal with the turbulent tribes; and it would most likely have proved fatal to one of M. Flandin’s excitable temperament. But now an opportunity offered to follow close upon the steps of a traveller protected by the authority of a diplomatic mission, and along a route that circumstances rendered at that time exceptionally secure.[188] M. Flandin finds some difficulty in excusing his neglect to perform a journey which his commission seemed to demand. He tells us that his purse had begun to feel the strain of eight months’ travel, although we find it was still sufficient to support the cost of another year in safer and pleasanter quarters.[189] Having abandoned this project, they returned for a few days to Persepolis, in order to obtain a few plaster casts of the more striking bas-reliefs. They reached Teheran on March 20, where they met Baron de Bode, who had just returned from Susa. The inspection of the antiquities he had collected ‘in that country, the object of our regrets,’ must have excited some mortifying reflections; though they gladly inferred from the drawings that the place ‘offered in reality little of interest.’[190] The excavations of Mr. Loftus, ten years later, dispelled this flattering illusion. After a month spent in the enjoyment of royal favour, they left Teheran (April 24), and proceeded by Tabriz and Urmia to Bagdad, which they reached in July. M. Flandin bade farewell to Persian territory after a free interchange of blows with the people of the frontier village.[191] From Bagdad he paid hurried visits to Hillah and Mosul; and left early in September for Aleppo and Beyrout, where he embarked for France on December 1, 1841.