Зображення сторінки
PDF
ePub

rence of their parliaments." It is in the fifteenth chapter of his second book that Selden treats on this matter, in which he adduces, as a further evidence of the dominion of the sea exercised by England, the tributes and taxes accustomed to be levied for the custody of it from the time of the Norman conquest. He begins with the Saxon tax of Danegeit, which he finds to have been occasionally levied by the Norman kings; once, particularly, by William Rufus, "with consent of his barons, but not by sanction of a law." And that this was regarded as a grievance, appears from King Stephen's promise, among other popular measures, entirely to àbolish Danegelt. In fact, this tax was not paid later than the reign of Henry II. and parliamentary grants for the purpose of guarding the seas, after its cessation, are cited by Selden under Edward I. Richard II. and Henry VI. He goes on to say, "Why do I quote these instances, when in the printed parliamentary records it frequently occurs, by way of preamble to a statute, that the kings of England from time immemorial have received by authority of parliament great sums of money under the title of a subsidy, or a tax upon goods imported or exported, for the defence of the realm, and the keeping and safeguard of the seas?" It is most extraordinary that Nicolson, with this passage full in his view, could represent Selden as countenancing by his authority the unconstitutional imposition of ship-money without the intervention of parliament.

The Mare Clausum was translated inso English in 1652, at the time of the breach between the English commonwealth and the

states of Holland, by Marchmont Needham, who took the liberty of suppressing the dedication to Charles, and substituting one to the republic. He also added an Ap pendix, containing some documents contributed by president Bradshaw. Another and an improved translation was made after the Restoration by J. H. (probably James Howel), and published in 1603; whence may be judged how flattering its doctrine was to the feelings of Englishmen.

DESCRIPTION OF TEHERAN.

(From Marier's Tour in Persia.)

Teheran, the present capital of Persia, is situated, as I ascertained by a meridional observation, in lat. 35° 40. It is in circumference between four and a half and five miles, if we might judge from the length of our ride round the walls, which indeed occupied an hour and a half; but from this we must deduct something for the deviations necessary from the intervention of the gardens, and the slaughter-houses. There are six gates, inlaid with coloured bricks and with figures of tigers and other beasts in rude mosaic: their entrance is lofty and domed; and they are certainly better than those that we had then seen in any of the fortified places of Persia. To the N. W. are separate towers. We saw two pieces of artillery, one apparently a mortar, the other a long gun. The ditch in some parts had fallen in, and was there supported by brick work. The town itself is about the size of

[ocr errors]

of Shiraz; but it has not so many public edifices; and, as it is built of bricks baked in the sun, the whole has a mud-like appearance. Of the mosques, the principal is the Mesjid Shah, a structure not yet finished. There are six others, small and insignificant; and three or four medressés or colleges. There are said to be one hundred and fifty caravanserais, and one hundred and fifty hummums or baths. There are two maidans; one in the town, the other within the ark, a square fortified palace, which contains all the establishments of the king, is surrounded by a wall and ditch, and is entered by two gates.

The Harem is most numerous, and contains a female establishment as extensive as the public household. All the officers of the king's court are there represented by females. There are women feroshes, and there is a woman ferosh bashee; women chatters, and a woman chatter bashee; there is a woman arz beggee, and a woman ish agassi; in short, there is a female duplicate for every male officer; and the king's service in the interior of the harem is carried on with the same etiquette and regularity, as the exterior economy of his state. The women of the harem, who are educated to administer to the pleasures of the King by singing and dancing, are instructed by the best masters that the country can supply. An Armenian at Shiraz was unfortunaterenowned for performing excelrently on the kamouncha. fame of his skill reached the king's ears, and he was immediately ordered up to court on the charge of being the best kamonncha player

The

in his majesty's dominions. The poor man, who had a wife and family and commercial concerns at Shiraz, was during our stay detained at Teheran expressly to teach the king's women the art of playing on the kamouncha.

The king's family consists of 65 sons. As they make no account of females, it is not known how many daughters he may have; although he is said to have an equal number of both sexes. It sometimes happens, that many of his women are delivered on the same night, and (if we might give credit to a Persian) one of these happy coincidences occurred during our abode in the capital, when in one night six of his women were brought to bed, four of sons and two of daughters. The Ameened-Doulah had one, indeed, of the babes at his house; and a present was sent for it from Ispahan, composed of four mules laden with all sorts of rich clothes.

The Tabkt-a-Cadjar is a pleasure house built by the present king, about two miles to the N. E. of Teheran. At a distance it presents a grand elevation, apparently of several stories; but these, on a nearer view, are the fronts of successive terraces. The entrance is through an indifferent gate, at the top of which is a summer-house. It leads into a spacious enclosure; in the middle is the principal walk, bounded on each side by some young cypress and poplar trees, and intersected at right angles in the centre by a stone channel, which conducts a stream at several intervals to small cascades. The building which stands on the first terrace is in form octagonal, crowned by a small flat roofed elevation.

It is open by arches on all its sides, and its raised ceiling is supported by pillars. Its interior is arranged. in a variety of water-channels, and through the centre passes the principal stream, which runs through the whole building and grounds. This little pleasure-house, though built of coarse materials and but rudely furnished, is erected on an excellent model, and is admirably calculated for the heats of the summer. Under it are subterraneous chambers. Proceeding further, on another terrace is a grand pleasure-house, constructed on a less perfect principle than that of the first, though still sufficiently adapted for a summer retreat. Through this also water is introduced from a terrace above. Before this place is a very extensive square of water, in which, as we were told, there were fish; we saw none, but the water itself is most luxuriously clear and refreshing. From this we ascended up two terraces. much more elevated than the first; on these there were only small reservoirs, from which the water was continually falling into the basins on the successive descents, at the height perhaps of twenty feet between each terrace.

At length we entered the main body of the building, which, like all other Persian houses, consists of a large square court lined on all sides with rooms of various dimensions and uses, The choicest apartment of the whole is a small one, placed in the very summit of the building, where every species of native workmanship in painting, glazing, and Mosaic, has been collected. We found here portraits of women, Europeans as well as Persians. The glass is beautifully

painted, and the doors are prettily worked and inlaid with poetical quotations carved in ivory. From this there is a delighful view of the town and country. In the other rooms below, there are several pictures of the king and his favourites; one of the subjects is singular, as it represents his ma.. jesty in the costume of a sick man.

The whole of this place is of brick, except the exterior wall, which is mud, flanked however by brick turrets. It is much inferior in workmanship to any of the brick buildings either of Kerim Khan, or of the Seffis. The soil on which it is erected is indeed illadapted to the purpose, as it is salt; and the salt oozes out through the walls and materially undermines their solidity.

The king is building another summer residence, half a mile from the town, called the Nega. ristan. One house is finished, consisting however of only an arched room, in which are various channels for water and playing fountains. In the garden we found water-cresses, of the eatableness of which the Persians ap-. peared torally ignorant.

The climate of Teheran is variable, in consequence of its situation at the foot of high mountains, which on the other side are backed by such a sea as the Caspian. For the earlier part of our stay it was moderate; till the 10th of March, the thermometer, which was suspended near an open window in a room unexposed to the sun, was at 51° Fahrenheit. On the 10th, throughout the whole day, there was much snow; indeed on the following morning, when the thermometer

thermometer was at 47°, the heat of the sun produced a partial thaw, which was succeeded by a frost so sharp, that before the close of the day, an officer of the suite, who weighed fourteen stone, was able to walk and slide upon a square reservoir before the Dewan Khonéh, even though the surface had been already broken at one corner. The fall of snow was a seasonable supply of moisture to the country, which had long been without any. On the new moon of March (the 15th of the month) the rain began, and for some days continued regularly, clearing up about four or five hours before sunset, and ga. thering again at night. From the height of the walls which surrounded us, and the want of weathercocks or chimnies, I could collect but imperfectly the quarter of the wind; but, as far as I could judge, it was generally from the S. E. There is a wind sometimes rushing from the Albores on the N. of the bleakness of which the natives speak with dread. From the 23d March (the first quarter of the moon) we had the true ethereal mildness of spring, with light breezes from the westward in the evening. Vegetation was making rapid advances: the rose-trees in the court of our house were already green, and the chenars had just begun to bud. The snow on the Albores was diminishing fast; and the weather generally, which sometimes lowered and then brightened up, was that of an English spring. The thermom ter was about 61° to 64°, but in the middle of the day it reached 75°, and the heat in the close streets of the town was very sensible. In the first week of April the morn»

ings were beautiful; but about noon a hot wind set in from the S. E. which increased towards the evening, and died away at night. About the second week the weather became cooler. Every thing was in high foliage, and all our horses were at grass. The heat was then becoming great: on the 19th the thermometer was at 82° in the shade, and at night we had thunder and lightning with a thick haze over the Albores. On the 21st the temperature, which in the interval had been at 86°, sunk to 67°. On the night of the 20th there had been a storm; and on the dawn of day we discovered that the Albores, which before bad lost their snow, were again covered. These transitions are common to situations like that of Teheran. The rain refreshed the air, and gave strength to the grass, which in the more immediate neighbour. hood of the town requires much moisture to enable it to pierce the hardness of the soil. From this time the days continued cool, with rain and frequent storms; and the evenings became almost piercing; but the showers gave a new force to vegetation.

Teheran is considered an unwholesome situation. The town is low and built on a salt, moist soil. In the summer the heats are said to be so insufferable, that all those who are able (all perhaps except a few old women) quit the town and live in tents nearer the foot of the Albores, where it is comparatively cool.

It is interesting to trace the pro gress of a capital. At about the same distance from Rhages, (at which the present city of Teheran may be placed from the remains of

Rey)

events of the last few years. It had been so much destroyed by the Afghans, (when after the battle of Salmanabad they invested it, in the hope of seizing Shah I hamas, who had retired thither) that Agą Mahomed, the late king, may be considered as almost its second founder I's nearness to his own tribe and province; the fac lities of raising instantaneously from the wandering tribes around it a large force of cavalry; and its central situation between the gen ra resources of his empi e and the more exposed frontiers, combined to justify his choice of Teheran as the capital of Persia. It has risen rapidly. In 1797 Olivier describes it as little more than two miles in circumference, and of the whole area the palace occupied more than one fourth. Tom. v p. 89. In 1809, it is stated to be between four and a half and five miles round the walls. The population, according to Olivier, even with all the encouragement which Aga Mahomed afforded to settlers, and including his own household of three thousand persons, amounted in 1797 to only fifteen thousand persons. Gardanne describes it, ten years afterwards, as having more than fifty thousand inhabitants during the winter; though he notices the almost total desertion of the city during the heats of

Rey) appears the town Tahora, in the Theodosian tables: a sufficient presumption that Teheran itself had an original and independant existence, and did not rise only from the ruins of the greater metropolis. Its continuance as a Contemporary city cannot now be traced distinctly; it may indeed have borne a different name in Eastern geography, as it is the Teheran or Cherijar of Tavernier. It re-appears however under its present name in the journey of the Castilian embassadors to Timur, at a p-iod when the greatness of Rey was still very considerable. At the end of two centuries, Pietro della Valle re-visited it He calls it the city of planes; tom. ii. 390: the soil is probably particularly adapted to the tree. for Olivier mentions one in the neigh bourhood that measured round an excrescence at the root, seventy feet; tom. v. p. 102. About the same time with Della Valle, Herbert described it fully. It is the Tyroan of his travels. Tavernier notices it more perhaps from the materials of others than from his own observations, tom. i. 313: and Chardin speaks of it only as "petite ville." Tom. ii. p. 120. Its name occurs with scarcely a line of comment, in a route given by Hanway, vol. i.; and though it was a place of some interest in the reign of Nadir, its actual state cannot be collected with any certainty till the accession of the present dynasty. It had long indeed been the capital of a province; and its name had been frequently connected with objects of importance in the history of the last two centuries; yet it owes its more immediate pre-eminence to the

summer.

Description of Arz-Roum, from the

same.

Arz-roum is built on a rising ground: on the highest part is the castle, surrounded by a double wall of stone, which is chequered at the top by embrazures, and strengthened here and there by projections

« НазадПродовжити »