fcendant excellence is ftill known to us by the name of Schiras wine. It was an allufion, probably, to the multitude of its vineyards in those ancient periods, that the golden bed of Darius was adorned with the stock of a vine in gold, whose expanded branches, containing clusters of jewels, rubies, emeralds, and amethysts, intended to represent grapes both green and in their various advances to maturity, over-canopied the recumbent monarch.* The pomegranates, alfo, of Perfia, are acknowledged to be the largest and fineft in the world; and the predilection of their ancestors for this fpecies of fruit is attefted by history and the grand monuments of Chelminar, or forty pillars, which are crowded with ftupendous hieroglyphic fculptures, many in the form of this vegetable; while the historic page recording the magnificent march of Xerxes. towards Greece, informs us, that'ten thoufand of the Perfian infantry, who seem to have formed his body-guard, bore javelins decorated with pomegranates; of whom one thoufand had that fymbol in gold, the other nine thousand in filver. The Perfian melons and dates, too, are without a rival in Afia; and, • See Athenæus, lib. xii. p. 408. from from what has been faid, it may fairly be inferred, that these choice wines and delicious fruits, both pickled and preserved, to which may be added a great variety of medicinal drugs indigenous to Perfia, were brought by her caravans to the famed emporia of Cabul and Lahore. Other provinces of Perfia, especially the more elevated regions towards the north, exhibited a prospect as cheerless and barren as the former was animated and fertile; where the difgufted eye and the weary foot travelled over immense deferts of scorching fand, unfheltered by one folitary fhrub, unrefreshed by one irriguous ftream. Their inmoft receffes were the gloomy, but fecure, haunt of the favages of the defert. The intrepid youth of Parthia, however ardent in the chafe, dared not pursue the lion or panther to that frightful abode; and often the benighted camel, though patient of fatigue and thirst, expired beneath its load in their inhofpitable bosom. The fortitude and induftry of man, that fhrunk from the danger of exploring the furface of those cheerless waftes, had yet penetrated with fuccefs their, fubterraneous regions. However externally barren and rocky thofe Hyrcanian folitudes, they were inter nally rich in mines; and, though the metals dug from them were not of the most precious kind, being principally iron and copper, yet were they eafily exchanged for them among their commercial neighbours of Arabia and Syria. The quantity of iron produced in their country fupplied their numerous forges employed in the manufacture of swords and fcimitars, celebrated through Afia for the excellency of their temper and the keenness of their edge. In those ancient times, too, when it was the delight of warriors to clothe them-felves in mail, and fhine in arms of steel or burnished brafs, which is formed of mingled calamine and copper, we cannot doubt of the 'important advantage, in point of commerce, arifing to the Perfians, from the mineral wealth of their country; nor that these and other articles of military request, the helmet, the buckler, the javelin, formed a confiderable part of their ancient barter with the Indians, a nation, one of whofe four grand tribes was, from early youth, wholly devoted to martial concerns. Among the various articles enumerated as imported from Perfia in after-ages into the Roman ftate, are reckoned Babylonian and Affyrain skins; and the inceffant and politic attachment attachment of the Parthians to the pleafures, or rather, as it was their cuftom to hunt only the moft ferocious beafts, the toils, of the chafe, muft infallibly have fecured them immenfe fpoils of this kind,-and the moft valuable of thefe, the tiger's, the leopard's, the panther's, fwelled the catalogue of the commodities transported to Cabul. It was not, however, alone the fkins of dead animals in which the Perfian merchants dealt: the caravans that carried thefe were followed by droves of living animals, reared with care in the wide champaign of that extenfive country. The Perfian breed of horfes, whether for war or ftate, was more famous in antiquity than that of Arabia is at this day; especially that magnificent fpecies bred in the Nifæan plains of Media, which were deemed ineftimable. Horfes, therefore, with their fplendid caparifons and steely armour, formed another important branch of this vaft traffic, and brought immenfe fums into the royal, as well as private, treasuries. They bred alfo mules and camels both for domeftic and foreign fale; nor fhould the fine ftuffs made of the camel's hair in Carmania, nor the ftill finer wool of that province, be wholly forgotten. Lastly, the bows and arrows, which they fabricated and used with fo much fkill, could not fail of being vended in large quantities to a nation nearly as dexterous in the use of those weapons as themselves. For thefe, the Indians gave them the peculiar fruits of their own genial region; all kinds of precious ftones; unwrought filk, brought from the Seres beyond the Ganges, together with cotton and `` fine linen, the labour of their own looms; aloes, spikenard, and other perfumes; the expreffed juice of the fugar-cane, which then grew fo plentifully in India, that they fed their horfes with it, as they do at this day in Berar; the indigo of Lahore, anciently the ftaple of that city, abfolutely neceffary to the Perfians, as it was the basis of their famous BLUE, which they ufed, and ftill ufe, in dyes; and all the rich variety of gums and fpices produced in the peninfular regions of India. From very remote periods, also, a confiderable commerce feems to have been establifhed between the countries fituated far to the north and north-weft of the fertile provinces which we have been defcribing with Grand Tartary, and even China itself, under the name of Serica, or the filk region.* For |