the author with great distinction ; gave him an escort; and by one of those revolutions so very frequent among the Turks, he perished three days after, being assassinated by a rival. From Van, M. Jaubert directed his course towards Cotourah, the last village in Turkey: he soon came in sight of Khoï, where the aspect of the country suddenly changes :-politeness of manner, health of the inhabitants, richness and variety of cultivation, elegance of language, every thing announces the Persian territory.

Khoï is a fortified town containing twenty-five thousand inhabitants. The governor endeavoured by innumerable civilities, to make our traveller forget the horrid treatment he had met with from the Kourdes. At his first stage from Khor, the author was not a little surprised to find lodgings and food prepared for him; but his astonishment was still greater to find himself received, at the entrance of a little village, with compliments in verse, rather flattering and highflown it is true, but couched in great purity of language.

After crossing a short desert, he arrived at Merend, the ancient Morunda, where opium and cochineal are found. The distance from this place to Tauris is reckoned eighteen leagues. The rivers he crossed in his route emptied themselves into the lake of Ormiah, another inland sea that derives its name from a town, celebrated as the birth-place of Zoroaster. Tauris has been shaken by earthquakes ; and if Chardin were to revisit it, he would no longer know it. The waters of the lake are bituminous, so that no fish can live in it. From time immemorial, the country has been torn by volcanic eruptions. The old name, Atropatene, as well as the modern one, Aderbidjan, signifies land of fire; and the author thinks that the mountains already mentioned, Ararat, Seïban, and Kusseh-Dag, have formerly emitted fire. The whole country is full of sulphuric mineral waters, and sulphur is plentiful: naphtha or petroleum is found there, and the inhabitants make use of it for lights. According to our author, Tauris is not the ancient Ecbatana, but the Gaza of the Medes; it is now the second city of Persia, and is surrounded by towers; with a population amounting to fifty thousand. Aderbidjan was governed by the Prince Abbas Mirza, son of the Chab: when the author arrived in this province, Feth-Aly-Kan, a well-informed and agreeable man, who had accompanied Mr. Malcolm in his first voyage to Persia, was then lieutenant of the Begler-beg: he lodged M. Jaubert in his magnificent palace, a decious residence, breathing voluptuousness and effeminacy: his conversation constantly turned either on the discoveries of the Europeans in the sciences, the great success at that time of the French nation, or upon the wisdom and glory of the reigning king, Feth-Aly-Chah.

From Tauris our traveller, instead of going on towards Teheran, travelled eastward, through Seidabad, Serab, and Ardebil, in order to visit the camp of Abbas-Mirza, not far from the Caspian sea : in this country the houses are built below the soil, like several parts of Armenia and Georgia, where the inhabitants lodge under ground. Ardebil is the mart for all the caravans travelling from Tiflis to Teheran and Ispahan : at this place, M. Jaubert, who had resumed his European dress, became the object of general and disagreeable curiosity. On his arrival at the camp of the young Persian prince, he was treated with the greatest distinction. Abbas-Mirza had recently Vol. I. No. 5, -Museum.

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gained some advantage over the Russians; but the renown of the victories of the French armies excited his admiration, and he wished to have a faithful account of them: he also wished to inform himself of every thing remarkable that had taken place amongst the ancients as well as moderns; the events of the French expedition to Egypt, the bravery of the Mamelukes, the life of the ferocious Djezzar, &c. On this occasion our traveller related his mission in 1804, to the Pacha of Acre, in the suite of General Sebastiani, and the singular conversations of this sanguinary man. Abbas-Mirza departed in order to take the field, and our author left for Khalkhal, and afterwards for Zinghian and Sultâniei, in Persian Irac: this last town, lately flourishing and full of inhabitants, is now an immense mass of ruins, the effect of civil wars: beyond it is the fertile valley of Abher, which follows the desert of Cazbin : this country produces excellent wine and pistachios. Our author witnessed at Cazbin a brilliant fete, in honour of the birth of three princes of the blood-royal: music, poetry, illuminations, flowers, dancing, and the most delicious perfumes embellished a splendid repast, where the wine of Schiraz was profusely drunk, in defiance of the law of Mahomet.

From Cazbin he travelled in three days to Teheran, the capital of Persia, escorter by a numerous and magnificent cavalry that FethAly-Chah the king had sent him. The Adjutant-General Romieux, although he left France on the same mission after M. Jaubert, arrived before him at Tehéran, by the way of Bagdad, but he died no one knew how, before the arrival of M. Jaubert. After the accustomed visits to the Vizier and the ministers, our traveller obtained his first audience of the Sovereign. We must refer our readers to the original for the curious account of his reception: when he made bis first obeisance, he was kept so far off, that he could scarcely see the throne of Feth-Aly-Chah. The master of the ceremonies having announced him to the king, he replied “ You are welcome ;" after which a Vizier conducted him

to the hall of audience, the magnificence of which is beyond expression ; millions of diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and sapphires, glittered on all sides: the king, covered with the finest diamonds, had three of his sons with him. After reading the credentials, the audience lasted an hour: Feth-Aly-Chah felt pleasure in conversing with an European without the assistance of an interpreter. The palace-gardens are not like those of the Turks, planted without either order or taste, nor are they like those of Exypt, entirely deprived of turf; there are serpentine walks, with basins of marble jets d'eau, &c. carpets of rich verdure, and a great variety of flowers.

Amongst the trees are the plantain, willow, poplar, &c., which surround the mysterious pavilion, where the Chah goes every day. The account of this voluptuous place, where the most beautiful women in Asia, aspire to the favour of their sovereign, must be read in the original : the miniatures of all those, who have succeeded in pleasing him, ornament one of the rooms, and their number is very considerable. The library contains some precious manuscripts, among which our author saw a poem of Feth-Aly-Chah's own composition. Tehéran has been the capital of the empire since the year 1794, which was in the reign of Mahomet Kan. The fortifications are inferior-the population inconsiderable—and the air unhealthy,

:

This was the time of the annual military review, and the king was desirous of taking M. Jaubert with him; but a violent fever, caused by the unhealthiness of Teheran, detained him with Aly-Chah-Abbas. The king's chief physician, Mirza-Chefi, received orders to take every care of him ; and his own life would be endangered if he did not restore his patient to health : this doctor ordered him, amongst other medicines, stewed rice, raw cucumbers, and green fruit: another physician of the royal harem advised him to pray to the prophet Ali. Happily he escaped both these orders, and got well in spite of cucumbers and rice. The king's physician was afraid at first that M. Jaubert would share the fate of Å. Romieux, who, after having escaped assassination from the Arabs in the desert of Orfa, and received an excellent reception from the king, suddenly died, with his travelling companion; or that of M. Outrey, vice-consul of Bagdad, and brotherin-law to the author, who had also been attacked with violent and dangerous illness: the complaints of our traveller, however, had a different origin, and soon yielded to the care of his friends. At last arrived at the camp of Sultaniéh, he assisted for forty days at the hunting parties of Feth-Aly-Chah, and at the reviews of troops, employing himself during the time with the purport of his mission: he at length obtained his audience of leave, and received magnificent presents : the king assured him that he much wished to be in amity with the French nation; and promised to receive with politeness all Frenchmen, who should be induced to visit Persia through curiosity or business. On the 14th of July, M. Jaubert set out with a numerous escort, accompanied by M. Dupré, son of the French consul at Trebizond, who came to Teheran, to bring the news of the peace of Presbourg ; Mirza-Chefi still attending him, had to answer with his head for the safety of the traveller. His route was nearly the same as that by which he came, by Taurus, the lake of Ormiah, and Khoï : at this last place he parted from the royal physician; for whose safety he provided for in his turn, by giving him a certificate of his good health.

Thence the travellers went to Van. In this place is the convent of the seven churches, inhabited by Armenian monks, less rigid in their diet than the monks of La Trappe. They then passed an arm of the Euphrates, near Touzla, which they crossed with the help of leather bottles; and lastly, the Araxes, which is in the same mountains as the Tigris and the Euphrates. Arrived at Erze-Roum, the Persian escort quitted M. Jaubert, who took the road to Djennés, which he considered the same place as Gymnias, known by the retreat of the ten thousand (rather than Kenes, as Mr. Macdonald Kinneir thought); then he reached Tchiftlik, the silver mines of Gumach-Khaneh, and the fine country of Trebizond, the end of M. Jaubert's voyage in Asia Minor. At this place he embarked directly for Constantinople. Bad weather forced the travellers to stay at several places on the southern borders of the Black Sea, as Thermeh, the ancient Themisciza, the fabled country of the Amazons, Samsoun or Amisus, and Sinope ; which gave him an opportunity of observing the soil, climate, and produce. The author was desirous of going by land to Sinope, but was prevented by a bloody battle being fought on the same day between the Turks and the inhabitants of Djanik, a country of the Mosinæques and Chalybes. The bridge was broken, and the streets of Bafrar were full of the dead and wounded. He returned to the coast, whence the ship had sailed, but fortunately a Greek vessel took him on board, and landed him at Sinope. This ancient capital of the kingdom of Pontus, the country of Diogenes the Cynic, and Mithridates, is so well known, that we shall pass slightly over the traveller's description of it. He found there M. Fourcade, the French consul, a man distinguished for various acquirements, and whose premature death is still remembered with regret by the scholar, the geographer, and the antiquary. From Sinope he went by land to Ineboli, and embarked for the celebrated town of Amastrah, where still exists the remains of a temple of Neptune, and the valley of Bartin, anciently Parthenius, which, though almost unknown or neglected, is a most fertile and picturesque country,

M. Jaubert next arrived at Heraclea, an inhospitable country, and dangerous to Europeans, of which he presents his readers with an interesting account from the pen of M. Allier de Hauteroche. He found at this place a forty-gun frigate, which in two days carried him to Tarapia, a town on the Bosphorus, where the French ambassador, General Sebastiani, was waiting for him; in the general's society he soon forgot his privations, his fatigues, and his misfortunes.

Here the narrative of M. Jaubert closes: it is full of simplicity and truth: and his descriptions are replete with energy and grace.

FROM THE EDINBURGB MAGAZINE,

ON THE INFLUENCE OF THE MOON UPON THE SEASONS.

Translated from a Paper of M. Olbers, in “Annales de Chimie et de Physique.

Fevrier, 1822."" The moon acts upon the earth in a manner certain and demonstrable; for it enlightens our nights, it draws the earth a little from its elliptic orbit, it occasions a small oscillation in the earth's axis, it produces the flux and reflux of the sea, and an analogous but less motion in the atmosphere. But it has been the general opinion of mankind, from time immemorial, that, beside these demonstrable effects, the moon, according to its different phases, exercises a considerable influence upon the weather, upon the health of mankind, upon animals, upon vegetation, and on chemical operations. Experience alone can throw light upon this subject; for it is possible that the moon may have an influence upon our atmosphere, produced by the different forces of attraction which it exercises at different times,-and also by its light. Long and well-conducted experiments have completely refuted such hypotheses; they have proved, that neither the lunar phases, nor the situation of the moon with respect to the sun and earth, have scarcely any influence upon the weather; for no fixed relation whatever can be discovered between them, notwithstanding the vast number of trials and observations which have been made for a great number of years. The results deduced from one series of meteorological observations, are always contradicted by another series : we cite, for example, Howard, who believed he had discovered that the barometer rose most frequently in the quadratures, and

was most common in the syzigies. Cotte, on the contrary, to whom meteorology is so much indebted, and who commenced in order to confirm the remark of Howard, afterwards found by twenty years' observation, that the barometer was the highest at the time of the new moons, and lowest at the time of the full moons. Lalande and Lamark have drawn from their observations the most opposite results, respecting the effects of the moon in her passage by the plane of the equator. But a decisive proof of the small influence of the moon, ap

a pears to me to result from this circumstance, that this influence, by whatever forces it may be produced, known or unknown, ought to be the greatest possible between the tropics; however, in the equatorial regions, not a trace of it can be found. In these countries, the heat, the rain, the winds, &c. all depend on the distance of the sun from the zenith of the place, without any regard to the situation or the phases of the moon. We may be yet more convinced of the smallness of this influence, if we reflect that the most opposite weather, in different parts, takes place at the same instant of time, and consequently, under the same lunar phase. This fact is determined, with the greatest evidence, by the accounts of the weather which we receive from different places during the time of an eclipse. M. Bode, for example, has collected the remarks made during the time of the solar eclipse which happened on the 18th of November, 1816; where we perceive a strange mixture of good and bad weather, without any respect to order, spread, during this day, through a great part of Europe. Professor Brandes, having compared, with great labour, but in a very instructive manner, the variation of the weather which took place over a great part of the earth's surface in 1783, found no relation between it and the lunar phases; and if a variation in the weather appeared to coincide with these phases in any one country, no variations, or opposite variations, would take place in other countries. The periods of eighteen and of nineteen years make no discovery of any sensible analogy in the variations of the weather, during the years equally distant from these intervals.

Some have pretended to have remarked sensible effects produced by the rising of the moon, and by her culmination; but the phenomena cited by them, either do not prove this influence, or are not accurate. Several of our mariners also hold, that the full moon, when rising, dissipates the clouds; but this prejudice owes its origin to the circumstance, that the clouds commonly disappear during a tranquil evening, and consequently also at the rising of the moon, according to a very just remark of M. Brandes. The pretended observation, that a storm cannot approach from the zenith at the time of full moon, contradicts itself; for the electric cloud which is at the horizon of one place, is at the zenith of another place not many miles distant. But in asserting that the lunar influence upon the season is extremely weak, and that it is nearly lost among the other causes which produce a variation in the weather, we are not certain that the moon does not produce some little effect. Let us see what the theory seems to indicate. The moon and sun produce, twice in twenty-four hours fifty minutes, a flux and reflux, both in the ocean and in the atmosphere: these motions vary with the phases of the moon; they are the strongest in the new and full moons, and the weakest in the first and last quarters. Let us suppose, for example, that the tides of the atmosphere produce