My third day's march took me over a region of low hills into the plain of Nishapur,ÁrminiusVambé so celebrated in Persia, and I may add in all Asia. Djolghe-i Nishabur (Plain of Nishapur) is in the eyes of the Persian the _ne plus ultra_ of beauty and wealth. For him the air there is purer and more fragrant than elsewhere; its water the sweetest in the world, and its products without rivals in creation. It is difficult adequately to describe the proud joy which is pictured in his countenance as he points out the hills lying towards the north-east, abounding in turquoise mines and precious metals. For myself, I must own that the plain, like the city situated in its midst, produced a pleasing, but by no means the entrancing effect I felt justified in anticipating. Its historical importance would hardly have occurred to me, had it not been that a Persian, who discovered I was a foreigner, joined in conversation with me by the way, and unasked, began to sound with no little exaggeration the praises of his native city.
No less inconsiderable did I find the town of Nishapur itself. The bazaar is tolerably well filled with European and Persian wares, but the traveller in vain explores the town for remains of that wealth and architectural beauty which have been so highly lauded by Eastern historians. The only things of note in the town are workshops for grinding and polishing the turquoises found in the neighbourhood. The stones in their unwrought state are of a gray colour, and only acquire their well-known sky-blue hue after repeated polishings. The deeper its colour, the more prominent its shape, and the smoother its surface, so much the more costly is a stone--veins being regarded as flaws. A curious phenomenon observable in these turquoises is that in many specimens the colour fades a few days after being polished. The inexperienced purchaser who is not aware of this circumstance not seldom becomes a victim to Persian fraud; and many pilgrims who have purchased in Nishapur stones of brilliant azure, have no other choice left them on their return home than to throw them away as faded and colourless. At the present day these mines are by no means so profitable as in former times, they being rented altogether for the low sum of two thousand ducats yearly. The commerce in the stones, which was once actively carried on between Persia and Europe, especially with Russia, has also of late years very much fallen off.