PART III.
A
JOURNEY TO INDIA, &c.
LETTER XLIII.
After passing through an immense tract of country, distinguished by nothing that could serve even as a circumstance to mark and remember our daily journeys, but which I observed to grow manifestly worse, both in soil and climate, as we proceeded Southward, we came in sight of the famous city of Bagdad, on the seventh day from that on which we left Mosul, and on the eighteenth from that of my departure from Aleppo; in which eighteen days we had rode fourteen hundred miles, partly through a route which no European, I have reason to believe, ever took before.
On entering the city, I desired my guide to conduct me to the house of a Merchant, to whom I had got letters of credit and introduction. He took me accordingly through the windings of several streets, and at last stopped at the door of an Armenian Merchant, or Coja, where he made me alight, and come in. I was received with great politeness; and, on producing my letter, found that he was not the person to whom it was directed: I accordingly made a suitable apology, and was for retiring to find the house of the proper person, for which purpose the Armenian offered me a servant, when, to my great astonishment, my Tartar interfered; said that it was to this Merchant he brought all his goods, and that I must remain where I was; at the same time ordering the Armenian, in a peremptory tone, to take charge of me, and use me well. It was in vain that the Armenian endeavoured to explain to him the nature of the business, and that I insisted I must go to the other Merchant——Hassan was peremptory, and declared that I should not. It was so extremely outré and ridiculous, that I could not be angry; and the good Armenian uniting his voice with that of the Tartar, and entreating me to favour him with my company, I acquiesced, and indeed remained in his house all the time I was at Bagdad. This was proof positive, if any other than I already had was wanting, that he considered me merely as a piece of merchandise, which he was bound (according to the language of Merchants) to deliver in good order and condition.