'Narrative of a Residence in Koordistan, and on the Site of Ancient Nineveh; with Journal of a Voyage down the Tigris to Bagdad and an Account of a Visit to Shirauz and Persepolis.' [‎234] (269/450)

234
CHOLERA AT SHIRAUZ. [LET. III.
popular ferment, comforting the timid, and main
taining peace and order. As soon as order was
restored, and things began to get a little into train
again, the malady was found to abate, which is a
proof how much depended on the imagination.
Nevertheless the mortality was considerable, though
much slighter than at any other place it has yet
visited, and the disease itself was no doubt of a much
milder character from the beginning. Thank God,
it is all over! None of my people had it. Mules
were not to be got at first, and besides where could
we have gone, surrounded as we were by the dis
ease ? I thought it much better to remain where
we were. I understand my staying comforted many
people, who were looking to see what I would say
and do on the occasion; if so, I thank God for it.
But I certainly often thanked God also while the
disease lasted that I had not brought you up here.
I should have ran away then as bad as the rest.
There is certainly a particular providence watching
over us.
The third lieutenant of the Liverpool, I now find,
died not from cholera but from the heat, which Mr.
Hyde, who joined me the day before yesterday, de
scribes as something more horrible than that of the
desert of Nubia.
A great many poor fellows in the cholera were
doubtless hurried out of the world by the Persian