length of the stream, without counting lesser windings, is 200 miles; its width at Hindyan, sixteen miles above its mouth, is eighty yards, and to this distance it is navigable for boats of twenty tons burthen.  At first its waters are pure and sweet, but they gradually become corrupted, and at Hindyan they are so brackish as not to be fit for use.  The Jerahi rises from several sources in the Kuh Margun, a lofty and precipitous range, forming the continuation of the chain of Zagros. about long. 50 deg. to 51 deg., and lat. 31 deg. 30’.  These head-streams have a general direction from N.E. to S.W.  The principal of them is the Kurdistan river, which rises about fifty miles to the north-east of Babahan and flowing south-west to that point, then bends round to the north, and runs north-west nearly to the fort of Mungasht, where it resumes its original direction, and receiving from the north-east the Abi Zard, or “Yellow River”—­a delightful stream of the coldest and purest water possible—­becomes known as the Jerahi, and carries a large body of water as far as Fellahiyeh or Dorak.  Near Dorak the waters of the Jerahi are drawn off into a number of canals, and the river is thus greatly diminished; but still the stream struggles on, and proceeds by a southerly course towards the Persian Gulf, which it enters near Gadi in long. 48 deg. 52’.  The course of the Jerahi, exclusively of the smaller windings, is about equal in length to that of the Tab or Hindyan.  In volume, before its dispersion, it is considerably greater than that river.  It has a breadth of about a hundred yards before it reaches Babahan, and is navigable for boats almost from its junction with the Abi Zard.  Its size is, however, greatly reduced in its lower course, and travellers who skirt the coast regard the Tab as the more important river.

The Kuran is a river very much exceeding in size both the Tab and the Jerahi.  It is formed by the junction of two large streams—­the Dizful river and the Kuran proper, or river of Shuster.  Of these the Shuster stream is the more eastern.  It rises in the Zarduh Kuh, or “Yellow Mountain,” in lat. 32 deg., long. 51 deg., almost opposite to the river Isfahan.  From its source it is a large stream.  Its direction is at first to the southeast, but after a while it sweeps round and runs considerably north of west; and this course it pursues through the mountains, receiving tributaries of importance from both sides, till, near Akhili, it turns round to the south, and, cutting at a right angle the outermost of the Zagros ranges, flows down with a course S.W. by S. nearly to Sinister, where, in consequence of a bund or dam thrown across it, it bifurcates, and passes in two streams to the right and to the left of the town.  The right branch, which earned commonly about two thirds of the water, proceeds by a tortuous course of nearly forty miles, in a direction a very little west of south, to its junction with the Dizful stream, which takes place about two miles north of