Near Shebester we passed the village of Misholéh, and, lower down in the plain, those of Arsaléh and Halee, on the left of the road. Others indeed are seen at every turn, situated at small intervals on either side alternately, all in the Mahalé of Ghunéh. Among them are Besh-kefelout, on the left; Khomyéh, prettily surrounded with verdure, on the right; Shinwar, on the left again; Kuzec-dunar, on the right, three fursungs before we reached our stage at Tasouj; and on the left, about two miles from the borders of the lake, Alibanglou, the first place in the Bolouk of Aeenzaub. In this line we stopt and fed our cattle and ourselves; while a refreshing breeze from the Westward just curled up the waters of the lake, and waved the corn fields which extended themselves on all sides of us.
Our bread and moss was shared by a stranger who was going to Oroumi, a large town, distant thirty fursungs from Tabriz; and situated, by the pointing of his hand, S. 50 W. from us, on the left or West side of the lake, which the road continues to skirt through its whole course. On the East of the lake is Saouk Bolag, the site of the ancient city of Sheherivan. The country, through which we passed in the day, was interesting and picturesque; in every turn of the view enriched by the lake and its surrounding capes and mountains.
From all that I could learn in this region, (and I inquired of many who had travelled repeatedly over this part of Aderbigian), there appeared to exist no other lake than this of Shahee. And I have as regularly made direct inquiries about the situation of the city of Van and its lake, without obtaining any thing like a satisfactory answer. On the contrary, the very existence of such a place, and such a lake, was always denied; I mention this, when the position of Van has been clearly ascertained, to shew how general was the ignorance of the people on every subject which was not immediately within their own circumscribed district. Nor was I more successful in my inquiries on the real extent of the lake before them: every one said that it was very large, and that it reached further, than from its appearance we might suppose.
At about five miles from Tasouj, there is a village on the left called Rahdar Khoné; and then a station of Rahdars, or custom-house officers. As we passed it, one of them, a man of a much more respectable appearance than any of the class whom we had seen on other occasions, told us that a driver with seven loaded mules had gone forwards, and refused to pay the duties, alleging that his beasts were carrying part of our baggage; and were therefore in the King’s service, and as such exempt from the impost. In fact, however, my Charwardar (or conductor of the mules or caravan) had added to my charge this number, above those that were necessary for my purposes; and, having already received a part of their hire from me, was now employing them still more to his own profit, by conveying upon them, duty-free, in my name, the goods of some Tabriz merchants. On discovering the fraud, I resigned him into the hands of the officer, with full liberty to exact his dues; a licence, under which he begun immediately to cudgel the shoulders of the defaulter. The duties here are high, being five reals on each load.
Some miles before we reached Tasouj, the lake begins to make an elliptical termination, and the road to turn off on a more Northern angle. We were eight hours in travelling the whole distance from Ali Shah, which we reckoned at thirty-two miles, on a bearing of N. 60 W. Tasouj, from the great extent of the ruined walls about it, appears once to have been a large place, but it is now reduced, by earthquakes, to the denomination of a village. There are remains of domed bazars and mosques, spread in every part of the place.
June 3. The distance from Tasouj to Khoi is called eight fursungs; we were however nine hours on the road, and calculated the journey at thirty-six miles. The general direction was N. 30 W. Our course for the first ten miles, to the foot of the range, (which encloses the plain and lake of Shahee) bore nearly West; when we suddenly turned to the North through the mountains; and, for ten miles more, wound among them through some very narrow defiles, and by some sharp ascents and descents, till we reached on the opposite side the plain of Khoi. Towards the lake the mountains are mostly of an argillaceous soil, but change into fine earth as they approach the plain of Khoi. In this direction they are green to their very summits, and their intervening vallies are covered with the finest pastures.
We had left Tasouj by moonlight: we could not therefore discover with any accuracy the nature of the country, which we traversed in the first part of our route; though we discerned indistinctly groves of trees, and heard the falling cascade in the recesses of the vallies. The first view of the plain of Khoi, from the summit of the pass in the mountains, is sublime. The city and its more immediate territory are seen on the N. but separated from the rest of the plain by a border of green hills, which seem to divide the expanse into two parts. At the distance of two fursungs from Khoi, we passed on the right the village of Disajiz, surrounded by fields of wheat and barley. On the left of the plain are some more villages; and one curious mound of red soil, crowned by a hillock of salt, besides several other white mounds, which are described as entirely of the same substance. We passed the small range of hills, and came all at once upon the more circumscribed plain of Khoi, which is opened by a seven-arched bridge, bordered on each side by rocks, and forming with the fine stream below a complete picture. The river is called the Otour, and flows from W. to E. falling into the Arras or Araxes, about twelve fursungs further to the Eastward.
The plain of Khoi (in breadth from N. to S. five miles, and in length ten) was the richest tract that we had seen. It was covered with corn, broken only here and there by the foliage of enclosed gardens. Of these gardens we ventured to enter one, which was renowned all over the country for its beauty and fruitfulness. It stands on the left of the road about two miles from the walls of Khoi, and was made by Hossein Khan, Governor of the city in the time of Aga Mohamed Khan; but it has now become the property of the government. It consists of a fine alley of chenar trees, which leads up to a pleasure-house, now falling into decay, built on the elevation of six terraces, from each of which falls a beautiful cascade, conducted by kanauts from the neighbouring mountains. On the right and left is a wood of fruit trees of every sort and description, with a fine crop of grass at their roots. From the pleasure-house is seen, through the alleys of chenars, the whole territory of Khoi, one of the most lively landscapes that we found in Persia. The chenar is really a delightful tree; its bole is of a fine white and smooth bark, and its foliage, which grows in a tuft at the summit, is of a bright green. Those in the garden had not attained their full growth. Their trunks are every where carved with the invocation of “Ya Ali;” proceeding probably from the ecstacies of those, who visit this little Persian paradise.
Khoi is surrounded with a wall, and with towers of a different construction to any which we had remarked in other fortified towns of Persia. They are triangular in front, with a species of connecting work behind them. There are four gates, which are of stone, and very superior to most of those that I had noticed elsewhere. Within the walls are twenty mosques and six baths. There are said to be ten thousand houses, and a population of fifty thousand persons, of which the larger proportion are Armenians. The Mussulmans live in a parish or Mahalé of their own. The territory is so extremely fertile, that Khoi, with the surrounding villages, pays annually to the public treasure the sum of one hundred thousand tomauns. Khoi is much warmer, from its local situation, than Tabriz. Roses here were in full flower, whereas a little opening bud was reckoned a rarity at Tabriz; and probably in twenty days from the date of our visit, the plain lost its verdure, and assumed the beautiful gilding of a ripe corn-field.
Six fursungs South from Khoi is an equally large and populous town called Salmas; where, as I afterwards learnt at Arz-roum, are “sculptured rocks and many ruins.” My informer added, that one of the subjects represented two men, of whom one, looking over his left shoulder, pointed with his hand to a spot which the people of the neighbourhood affirm to contain a hidden treasure, though they admit that the deposit has escaped all research.