Our conversation was not very lively, as the interpreter was not allowed to follow me into this sanctum.  We were therefore obliged to content ourselves with making signs and looking at one another.

When I returned to the prince, I expressed to him my wonder at the rare beauty of his young wife, and asked him what country was the cradle of this true angel.  He told me the north of Persia, and assured me, at the same time, that his other wives, of whom he had four in Baghdad and four in Teheran with his mother, very much excelled this one in beauty.

When I would have taken my leave of the prince to return home, he proposed to me that I should remain a little while longer and hear some Persian music.  Two minstrels presently appeared, one of whom had a kind of mandolin with five strings; the other was a singer.  The musician preluded very well, played European as well as Persian melodies, and handled his instrument with great facility; the singer executed roulades, and, unfortunately, his voice was neither cultivated nor pure; but he seldom gave false notes, and they both kept good time.  The Persian music and songs had considerable range of notes and variations in the melody; I had not heard anything like them for a long time.

I reached home safely before sunset, and did not feel very much fatigued, either by the ride of thirty-six miles, the terrible heat, or the wandering about on foot.  Only two days afterwards, I set out on my road to the ruins of the city of Babylon.  The district in which these ruins lie is called Isak-Arabia, and is the seat of the ancient Babylonia and Chaldea.

I rode, the same evening, twenty miles, as far as the Chan Assad.  The palms and fruit-trees gradually decreased in number, the cultivated ground grew less and less, and the desert spread itself before me, deadening all pleasure and animation.  Here and there grew some low herbage scarcely sufficient for the frugal camel; even this ceases a few miles before coming to Assad, and from thence to Hilla the desert appeared uninterruptedly in its sad and uniform nakedness.

We passed the place where the town of Borossippa formerly stood, and where it is said that a pillar of Nourhwan’s palace is yet to be seen; but I could not discover it anywhere, although the whole desert lay open before me and a bright sunset afforded abundance of light.  I therefore contented myself with the place, and did not, on that account, remember with less enthusiasm the great Alexander, here at the last scene of his actions, when he was warned not to enter Babylon again.  Instead of the pillar, I saw the ruins of one large and several smaller canals.  The large one formerly united the Euphrates with the Tigris, and the whole served for irrigating the land.