'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.' [‎151] (182/582)

TO BISITOON AND KENGAWAR.
151
there was no time afforded for the examination of its minuter
features. Its general aspect was all that could be caught.
Kengawar is seated on the side of a gentle hill, at the north
western edge of a fine plain, and has within its site several emi
nences and depressions. In its present state, it contains about
two thousand dwellings, with two mosques for the population, who
are all Sheeahs. Most of those dwellings are well built; and
besides these there are extensive and well-furnished bazaars, the
shops of which have their doors secured by long diagonal bars of
iron, going from the locks obliquely across them, in a way that
we had not noted any where else.
The town appears to have been once much larger than at pre
sent, as vestiges of buildings, and the wreck of human labour, are
seen in several places beyond the limits of its present site. These,
however, appear to be of a higher antiquity than the Mohammedan
era. The most remarkable feature of this kind is the portion of
a large building, nearly in the centre of the present town, and
called the Castle of the Infidels. To one part of it is attached a
new mosque, the outer enclosure of which is continued from the
castle's walls. The foundation of the western front, with the
surbasement of the building there, and a range of marble columns
still standing on it, apparently in their original place, are all
perfect, and are undoubtedly the work of a people either coeval
with, or antecedent to, the visit of the Greeks to this country.
There is nothing Saracen in all its appearance; and if not a work
of western conquerors, it is undisputably of the early Persian or
Median empire. The walls are formed of large Well-hewn stones
of a yellowish colour, and the surbasement ol the front is ter
minated by a plain moulding : the white marble columns, as they
now stand, are of perfectly plain shafts, without base or capital;
they are from four to five feet in diameter, of a low proportion in
height, and in this respect, as well as in their intercolumniation,
approaching nearer to the Doric order than any other. These