MR. WILTON. "And here the traveller finds collected into a focus all the picturesque items that have struck him elsewhere. Alongside of a Tartar dwelling stretches a great building blackened by time, and by its architecture and carvings carrying you back to the middle ages. A European shop displays its fashionable haberdashery opposite a caravanserai; the magnificent cathedral overshadows a pretty mosque with its fountain; a Moorish balcony contains a group of young European ladies, who set you thinking of Paris; whilst a graceful white shadow glides mysteriously under the gallery of an old palace. All contrasts are here met together; and so it happens, that in passing from one quarter to another you think you have made but a short promenade, and you have picked up a stock of observation and reminiscences belonging to all times and places. The Russians ought to be proud of this town; for, unlike others in this country, it is not of yesterday's formation, and is the only place throughout the empire where the traveller is not plagued with the cold monotonous regularity which meets him at every other city in Russia. The Caspian Sea covers an extent of 120,000 square miles, and is the largest salt lake known."
MR. BARRAUD. "Near a place called Semnoon, not many miles from Asterabad, there formerly stood a city of Guebres, named Dzedjin, with which a droll legend is connected:--
"'When Semnoon was built, the water with which it was supplied flowed from the city of the Guebres, who one day turned the stream, and cut off the supplies. Sin and Lam (two prophets), seeing the town about to perish for want of water, repaired to Dzedjin, and entreated the chiefs of that place to allow the stream to return to its old channel. This they at first refused, but finally made an agreement, that on the payment of a sum equal to a thousand tomauns, or 500_l_., the water should be allowed to flow into the city as long as life remained in the head of a fly, which was to be cut off and thrown into a basin of water. This was done; but, to the great astonishment of the Guebres, the head retained life during thirteen days, which so exasperated them against Sin and Lam, whom they perceived to be men of God that they sent an armed party to Semnoon to make them prisoners.