ddy precipices, with a general dreamy sense that
it was magnificent scenery for any one who was in a bodily condition to
admire it.

Swift clear streams and emerald valleys began to refresh the travellers
as they rose into the higher land above the arid region; and, after one
twenty-four hours' halt in a sort of summer-house, where Henry Martyn was
too ill to move till he had had a few hours of sleep, they safely arrived
at the mountain-city of Shiraz, where he was kindly received by Jaffier
Ali Khan, a Persian gentleman to whom he had brought letters of
introduction.

Persia, as is well known, has a peculiar intellectual character of its
own. Descended from the Indo-European stock, and preserved from total
enervation by their mountain air, the inhabitants have, even under Islam,
retained much of the vivacity, fire, and poetry inherent in the Aryan
nature. Their taste for beauty, especially in form and colour, has
always been exquisite; their delight in gardens, in music, and poetry has
had a certain refinement, and with many terrible faults--in especial
falsehood and cruelty, the absence of the Turkish stolidity, the Arab
wildness, and the Hindoo pride and indolence--has always made them an
attractive people. Their Mahommedanism, too, is of a different form from
that of the Arab and Turk. Theirs is the schismatical sect of Ali, which
is less rigid, and affords more scope for the intellect and fancy, and it
has thrown off a curious body called the Soofees, a sort of philosophers
in relation to Islam. The name may be either really taken from the Greek
_Sophos_, wise, or else comes from the Persian _Soof_, purity. The
Soofees profess to be continually in search of truth, and seem, for the
most part, to rest upon a general belief in an all-pervading Creator,
with a spirit diffused through all His works. Like their (apparent)
namesakes of old, they revel in argument, and delight to tell or to hear
some new thing.

Thus, Jaffier Ali Khan, who belonged to this sect, made the English padre
welcome; and his brother, Seid Ali, whose title of Mirza shows him to
have been a Scribe, undertook to assist in the translation, while
Moollahs and students delighted to come and hold discussions with him;
and very vain and unprofitable logomachies he found them, whether with
Soofee, Mahometan, or Jew. But the life, on the whole, was interesting,
since he was fulfilling his most important object of providing a
trustworthy and cla