Meanwhile Kæmpfer, who lost no opportunity of penetrating into the character and observing the manners of a foreign people, employed his leisure in collecting materials for the various works which he meditated. He bestowed particular attention upon the ceremonies and observances of the court; the character and actions of the shah; the form of government; the great officers of state; the revenue and forces; and the religion, customs, dress, food, and manners of the people. His principal inquiries, however, both here and elsewhere, had medicine and natural history for their object; and that his researches were neither barren nor frivolous is demonstrated by his “Amœnitates Exoticæ,” one of the most instructive and amusing books which have ever been written on the East.
Towards the conclusion of the year 1686, M. Fabricius, having successfully terminated his negotiations with the Persian court, prepared to leave Ispahan; but Germany being still, says Kæmpfer, engaged in war with France and the Ottoman Porte, he preferred relinquishing his office of secretary to the embassy, and pushing his fortunes in the remoter countries of the East, to the idea of beholding, and perhaps involving himself in the calamities of his native land, which, however he might deplore, he had no power to remedy or alleviate. He therefore took his leave of the ambassador, who did him the honour to accompany him with all his retinue a mile out of Ispahan, and proceeded towards Gombroon, or Bander-Abassi, having, by the friendship of Father du Mons, and the recommendations of M. Fabricius, obtained the office of chief surgeon to the fleet of the Dutch East India Company, then cruising in the Persian Gulf. He long hesitated, he says, whether he should select Egypt or the “Farther East” for the field of his researches; and had not circumstances, which frequently stand in the place of destiny, interposed, it is probable that the charms of the Nile would have proved the more powerful. To a man like Kæmpfer, the offer of becoming chief physician to a Georgian Prince, “with considerable appointments,” which was made him about this time, could have held out but small temptation, as he must have been thoroughly acquainted, not only with the general poverty of both prince and people, but likewise with the utter insecurity of person and property in that wretched country.
It was during this journey that he visited the celebrated ruins of Persepolis. He arrived in sight of the Forty Pillars on the 1st of December, 1686; and looking towards this scene of ancient magnificence, where the choicest of the population of a vast empire had once sported like butterflies in the sun, his eye encountered about fifty black Turcoman tents upon the plain, before the doors of which sat a number of women engaged in weaving, while their husbands and children were amusing themselves in the tents, or absent with the flocks and herds. Not having seen the simple apparatus which enables the Hindoos to produce the finest fabrics in the world, whether in chintzes or muslins, Kæmpfer beheld with astonishment the comparatively excellent productions of these rude looms, and the skill and industry of the Persepolitan Calypsos, whose fair fingers thus emulated the illustrious labours of the Homeric goddesses and queens. It was not within the power of his imagination, however, inflamed as it was by the gorgeous descriptions of Diodorus and other ancient historians, to bestow a moment upon any thing modern in the presence of those mysterious and prodigious ruins, sculptured with characters which no longer speak to the eye, and exhibiting architectural details which the ingenuity of these “degenerate days” lacks the acumen to interpret. Here, if we may conjecture from the solemn splendour of the language in which he relates what he saw, his mind revelled in those dreamy delights which are almost inevitably inspired by the sight of ancient monuments rent, shattered, and half-obliterated by time.
Having gratified his antiquarian curiosity by the examination of these memorials of Alexander’s passion for Thaïs, who,—
Like another Helen, fired another Troy,—
he continued his journey to Shiraz, where beauties of another kind, exquisite, to use his own language, beyond credibility, and marvellously varied, refreshed the eye, and seemed to efface from the mind all recollection of the fact that the earth contained such things as graves or ruins. The effervescence of animal spirits occasioned by the air and aspect of scenes so delicious appeared for the moment to justify the enthusiasm of the Persian poet, who, half-intoxicated with the perfume of the atmosphere, exclaims:—
Boy, bid yon ruby liquid flow,
And let thy pensive heart be glad,
Whate’er the frowning zealots say;
Tell them their Eden cannot show