'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.' [‎394] (425/582)

394 APPEARANCE OF THE COUNTRY.
twelve miles distant in a south-western direction. When this
water disappears by evaporation, and the remainder is imbibed
by the earth, the Desert continues for a long time almost im
passable, as the soil is here a clayey earth, altogether free from
sand; and when it becomes entirely dry, a crust of salt is left on
the surface, of sufficient thickness to yield supplies of this article
to the town and neighbouring villages. It is this salt which,
whether it is inherent in the soil, or comes from the Khore
Abdallah as an arm of the sea, renders the whole tract of many
miles in length and breadth barren and unproductive.
It is the practice to enclose portions of this plain, near the
city walls, within mounds thrown up for the purpose, and to
water them from the canals of the river which supply the town.
During the first year nothing is produced, but the soil freshens,
and in the second year is cultivated. Its fertility encreases how
ever progressively ; and after the water of the Desert has been
effectually secluded for a few years only, the enclosed portions
become fine garden-plots, capable of producing any thing congenial
with the climate. If the Government were a provident one, and
the character of the people so influenced by it as to ensure
greater attention to their own interests, and some consideration
for their posterity, the whole of the tract which is now desert, and
extends as far as the eye can reach to the westward from the
highest towers of Bussorah, might be changed to waving fields of
plenty and abundance, and teem with a population made happy
by their own exertions. At present, however, in riding round
the walls of the city, and particularly on the western and south
ern sides, nothing is seen but a dreary waste, to which the
imagination can place no well-defined limits, when it conceives
that the Desert reaches, almost without interruption, to the
borders of Syria ; and within the range of view from hence there
is nothing to break the sea-like line of the visible horizon,
excepting only the tops of the houses of Zobeir, just seen above
it, with a few modern watch-towers in the neighbourhood of that