It is open by arches on all its sides, and its raised ceiling is supported by pillars. Its interior is arranged in a variety of water channels, and through the centre passes the principal stream, which runs through the whole building and grounds. This little pleasure-house, though built of coarse materials and but rudely furnished, is erected on an excellent model, and is admirably calculated for the heats of the summer. Under it are subterraneous chambers. Proceeding further, on another terrace is a grand pleasure-house, constructed on a less perfect principle than that of the first, though still sufficiently adapted for a

summer retreat.

Through this also water is introduced from a terrace above. Before this place is a very extensive square of water, in which, as we were told, there were fish; we saw none, but the water itself is most luxuriously clear and refreshing. From this we ascended up two terraces much more elevated than the first; on these there were only small reservoirs, from which the water was continually falling into the basins on the successive descents, at the height perhaps of twenty feet between each terrace.

At length we entered the main body of the building, which, like all other Persian houses, consists of a large square court lined on all sides with rooms of various dimensions and uses. The choicest apartment of the whole is a small one, placed in the very summit of the building, where every species of native workmanship in painting, glazing, and Mosaic, has been collected. We found here portraits of women, Europeans as well as Persians. The glass is beautifully

painted, and the doors are prettily. worked and inlaid with poetical quotations carved in ivory. From this there is a delighful view of the town and country. In the other rooms below, there are several pictures of the king and his favourites; one of the subjects is singular, as it represents his majesty in the costume of a sick man.

The whole of this place is of brick, except the exterior wall, which is mud, flanked however by trick turrets. It is much inferior in workmanship to any of the brick buildings either of Kerim Khan, or of the Seffis. The soil on which it is erected is indeed illadapted to the purpose, as it is salt; and the salt oozes out through the walls and materially undermines their solidity.

The king is building another summer residence, half a mile from the town, called the Negaristan. One house is finished, consisting however of only an arched room, in which are various channels for water and playing fountains. In the garden we found water-cresses, of the eatableness of which the Persians appeared totally ignorant.

The climate of Teheran is variable, in consequence of its situation at the foot of high mountains, which on the other side are backed by such a sea as the Caspian. For the earlier part of our stay it was moderate; till the 10th of March, the thermometer, which was suspended near an open window in a room unexposed to the sun, was at 51° Fahrenheit. On the 10th, throughout the whole day, there was much snow; indeed on the following morning, when the thermometer

thermometer was at 47°, the heat of the sun produced a partial thaw, which was succeeded by a frost so sharp, that before the close of the day, an officer of the suite, who weighed fourteen stone, was able to walk and slide upon a square reservoir before the Dewan Khonéh, even though the surface had been already broken at one corner. The fall of snow was a seasonable supply of moisture to the country, which had long been without any. On the new moon of March (the 15th of the month) the rain began, and for some days continued regularly, clearing up about four or five hours before sunset, and gathering again at night. From the height of the walls which surrounded us, and the want of weathercocks or chimnies, I could collect but imperfectly the quarter of the wind; but, as far as I could judge, it was generally from the S. E. There is a wind sometimes rushing from the Albores on the N. of the bleakness of which the natives speak with dread. From the 23d March (the first quarter of the moon) we had the true ethereal mildness of spring, with light breezes from the westward in the evening. Vegetation was making rapid advances: the rose-trees in the court of our house were already green, and the chenars had just begun to bud. The snow on the Albores was diminishing fast; and the weather generally, which sometimes lowered and then brightened up, was that of an English spring. The thermometer was about 61° to 64°, but in the middle of the day it reached 75°, and the heat in the close streets of the town was very sensible. In the first week of April the morn

ings were beautiful; but about noon a hot wind set in from the S. E. which increased towards the evening, and died away at night. About the second week the weather became cooler. Every thing was in high foliage, and all our horses were at grass. The heat was then becoming great: on the 19th the thermometer was at 82° in the shade, and at night we had thunder and lightning with a thick haze over the Albores. On the 21st the temperature, which in the interval had been at 86°, sunk to 67°. On the night of the 20th there had been a storm: and on the dawn of day we discovered that the Albores, which before had lost their snow, were again covered. These transitions are common to situations like that of Teheran. The rain refreshed the air, and gave strength to the grass, which in the more immediate neighbour hood of the town requires much moisture to enable it to pierce ane hardness of the soil. From this time the days continued cool, with ram and frequent storms; and the evenings became almost piercing; but the showers gave a new force to vegetation.

Teheran is considered an unwholesome situation. The town is low and built on a salt, moist soil. In the summer the heats are said to be so insufferable, that all those who are able (all perhaps ex-' cept a few old women) quit the town and live in tents nearer the foot of the Albores, where it is comparatively cool.

It is interesting to trace the progress of a capital. At about the same distance from Rhages, (at which the present city of Teheran may be placed from the remains of

Rey)

Rey) appears the town Tahora, in the Theodosian tables: a sufficient presumption that Teheran itself had an original and independant existence, and did not rise only from the ruins of the greater metropolis. Its continuance as a contemporary city cannot now be traced distinctly; it may indeed have borne a different name in Eastern geography, as it is the Teheran or Cherijar of Tavernier. It re-appears however under its present name in the journey of the Castilian embassadors to Timur, at a period when the greatness of Rey was still very considerable. At the end of two centuries, Pietro della Valle re-visited it. He calls it the city of planes; tom. ii. 390: the soil is probably particularly adapted to the tree; for Olivier mentions one in the neighbourhood that measured round an excrescence at the root, seventy feet; tom. v. p. 102. About the same time with Della Valle, Herbert described it fully. It is the Tyroan of his travels Tavernier notices it more perhaps from the materials of others than from his own observations, tom. i. 313: and Chardin speaks of it only as "petite ville." Tom. ii. p. 120. Its name occurs with scarcely a line of comment, in a route given by Hanway, vol. i.; and though it was a place of some interest in the reign of Nadir, its actual state cannot be collected with any certainty till the accession of the present dynasty. It had long indeed been the capital of a province; and its name had been frequently connected with objects of importance in the history of the last two centuries; yet it owes its more immediate pre-eminence to the

events of the last few years. It had been so much destroyed by the Afghans, (when after the battle of Salmanabad they invested it, in the hope of seizing Shah ! hamas, who had retired thither) that Aga Mahomed, the late king, may be considered as almost its second founder. I's nearness to his own tribe and province; the facilities of raising instantaneously from the wandering tribes around it a large force of cavalry; and its central situation between the general resources of his empire and the more exposed frontiers, combined to justify his choice of Teheran as the capital of Persia. It has risen rapidly. In 1797 Olivier describes it as little more than two miles in circumference, and of the whole area the palace occupied more than one-fourth. Tom. v p. 89. In 1809, it is stated to be between four and a half and five miles round the walls. The population, according to Olivier, even with all the encouragement which Aga Mahomed afforded to settlers, and including his own household of three thousand persons, amounted in 1797 to only fifteen thousand persons. Gardanne describes it, ten years afterwards, as having more than fifty thousand inhabitants during the winter; though he notices the almost total desertion of the city during the heats of

summer.

Description of Arz-Roum, from the

same.

Arz-roum is built on a rising ground: on the highest part is the castle, surrounded by a double wall of stone, which is chequered at the top by embrazures, and strengthened here and there by projections

in the fashion of bastions, with openings fit for the reception of cannon. It has four gates, which are covered with plates of iron. The whole is well built, and to me does not appear the work of Mussulmans. A ditch runs by it to the S. W.; near it is a tannery; and further on is a row of blacksmiths' forges, which seemed in good employ. In this direction (N. E. of the town) is the customhouse, a spacious building. The Pacha's residence has a large gate opening into a court-yard. The houses are in general built of stone, with rafters of wood, and terraced. Grass grows on their tops, and sheep and calves feed there; so that, when seen from an eminence, the roofs of the houses can hardly be distinguished from the plain at their foundation. I walked through most of the bazars; tew are domed, the rest are terraced, like the dwellings, but affording a common road for foot-passengers, who ascend by a public flight of steps. Wherever a street intervenes, a bridge is thrown over, and the line continues uninterrupted. The shops in the bazars are well stocked, and the place exhibits an appearance of much industry. The streets are mostly paved; but, as in Turkey, in that manner which is more calculated to break the passenger's neck than to ease his feet, There are sixteen baths, and one hundred mosques; several of the latter are creditable buildings, the domes of which are covered with lead, and ornamented with gilt balls and crescents.

( This is the present state of Arzroum; it remains prove that it must have been still more considerable. Every thing attests the antiquity of

the place; the inhabitants indeed date the foundation from the time of Noah, and very zealously swear, that some of their present struc tures were contemporary with the patriarch: with less hazard of truth, or rather with much appearance of probability, they aver that others were the work of the Giaours, or Infidels. One in particular is at tributed to the latter origin; it con sists of an arched gateway, curi, ously worked all in strong stone, situated N. W. in the castle, and close to a decayed minaret of ancient structure. Yet many of the older fabrics appear, by the true Moresque arch, to be certainly of Saracenic origin; and many of the remains of mosques resemble those buildings in Persia, with curious bricks, and lacquered tiles, which were raised in the first ages of Mahomedanism. In all those at Arz. roum, I observed a round tower, with a very shelving roof, covered all over with bricks. There are still erect several minarets, obviously works of the early Mussulmans. Near the eastern gate of

the castle are two of brick and tile, and a gate (with a Saracenic arch and a Cufic inscription) and many strong stone buildings around, the remains of the fine portico of a mosque. To the east of the town is an old tower of brick, the highest building in Arz-roum, which is used as a look-out-house, and serves as the tower of the Janizaries at Constantinople, or that of Galata. There is a clock at the summit, which strikes the hours with sufficient regularity.

In Arz-roum there are from four to five thousand families of the Armenian, and about one hundred of the Greek, persuasion: the for

mer

mer have two churches, the latter one. There are perhaps one thousand Persians who live in a caravanserai, and manage by caravans the trade of their own country. Trebisond is the port on the Black Sea, to which the commerce of Constantinople is conveyed. The Turkish inhabitants of Arz-roum are fifty thousand families This amount of the population I give from the authority a well-informed Armenian; but as all such details in a country so ill-regulated are exceedingly suspicious, I have already taken the liberty to deduct more than one-third from the number of Turkish families in the original estimate. But the reduced statement still leaves in Arz-roum, at the rate of five persons in a family, a total of two hundred and fifty thousand persons, besides Ar

menians.

The climate of Arz-roum is very changeable, and must in winter be piercingly cold. It rained throughout the whole of the 19th, but the clouds dispersed on the morrow, and discovered the adjacent hills overspread with snow. The high lands which arise from the plain around, attract constant thunder storms; the elevation, indeed, of the whole region from the base of the sea itself is very considerable, and is sufficient to account for the cold.

INHABITANTS OF BUENS AYRES.

From Mawe's Travels in Brazil.

The population of Buenos Ayres and its immediate suburbs, exclusive of the country in its vicinity,

has been ascertained to amount te upwards of sixty thousand souls. The proportion of females to males is said to be as four to one, but if we take into consideration that many men are almost daily arriving from Europe, as well as from the South American provinces, and that under the "old government neither the militia nor the marine was recruited from the mass of the population, we shall find reason to conclude that the proportion of the sexes is not so unequal. In the interior the excess of males is very great, for as the lands are granted in large tracts only, and but poorly cultivated, there is no encouragement for the labouring classes to marry and settle upon them. The poor are compelled to remain single from the very bare resources on which they depend for subsistence, and are accustomed to consider the married state as fraught with heavy burthens and inevitable misfortunes. It is not uncommon to find estates larger than an English county with hardly more than a hundred labourers upon them, who subsist upon the sale of a little corn which each is permitted to grow for himself, but only to such an extent as a single man can plough..

The various races which compose the population are as fol

low:

1. Legitimate Spaniards or Europeans. In Buenos Ayres there are about three thousand; in the interior the number is very trifling, except in Potosi, which, being a mining country, contains many.

2. Creoles; legitimate descendants from Spaniards or Europeans. 3. Mestizos,