'Travels in Assyria, Media, and Persia, including a journey from Bagdad by Mount Zagros, to Hamadan, the ancient Ecbatana, researches in Ispahan and the ruins of Persepolis, and journey from thence by Shiraz and Shapoor to the sea-shore. Description of Bussorah, Bushire, Bahrein, Ormuz, and Muscat, narrative of an expedition against the pirates of the Persian Gulf, with illustrations of the voyage of Nearchus, and passage by the Arabian Sea to Bombay.' [‎145] (176/582)

TO BIS1TOON AND KENGAWAR.
145
ing to Diodorus Siculus, and Isidore of Charax, Semiramis, the
Queen of Babylon, caused her figure to be sculptured, attended
by a hundred guards. After quitting Babylonia, where, accord
ing to the historian, she had executed many marvellous works, to
enter Media, with an army, she halted at Mount Baghistan, which
was sacred to Jupiter, and made there a garden of twelve stadia,
in a plain watered by a stream, whose source was near. The
mountain rose to the height of seventeen stadia. Accompanying
her figure, and those of her armed guards, was an inscription in
Syriac, which recorded that by piling up the baggage with which
her animals were laden, this Queen mounted on it from the plain
to the summit of the hill.
There are several of these features which are in strict cor
respondence with the actual situation of the place. The plain of
Chum Chemal, which lies to the eastward of this mountain, and
is thus spread out at its feet, is about three miles in breadth, and
is therefore capable of containing the garden of twelve stadia
spoken of; while through it flow from the northward the streams
of Komeshah and Zerdoo, both of considerable size, going ulti
mately into the Kara Soo. Towards this plain the mountain rises
in a perpendicular cliff of nearly two thousand feet high, and
presents the most imposing aspect; but in no other part of the
range is the rise so abrupt, or the perpendicular height so great.
Its singularity in this particular has obtained this part its present
appellation, from " Sitoon," a pillar, like which it rises from the
plain; while the rest of the mountain has other names assigned to
its respective parts, as Paroo, Tauk-e-Bostan, &c.
The height of seventeen stadia may probably be an error in
estimation, or in the transcript of figures : it is sufficient, how
ever, that the perpendicular rise of the mountain towards the
garden is unusually great; and this peculiarity still remains, as
a cliff of two thousand feet hanging over a plain is no ordinary
feature here or elsewhere. It was perhaps the isolated situation
of the whole mass, with the grand and terrific appearance of this
u