ulous and cultivated tract
that I had seen in Persia.... Next morning we quitted Derrood ... by a
very indifferent but interesting road, the glen being finely wooded with
walnut, mulberry, poplar, and willow-trees, and fruit-tree gardens rising
one above the other upon the mountain-side, watered by little rills....
These gardens extended for several miles up the glen; beyond them the bank
of the stream continued to be fringed with white sycamore, willow, ash,
mulberry, poplar, and woods that love a moist situation," and so on,
describing a style of scenery not common in Persia, and expressing
diffusely (as it seems to me) the same picture as Polo's two lines. In the
valley of Nishapur, again (we quote Arthur Conolly): "'This is Persia!'
was the vain exclamation of those who were alive to the beauty of the
scene; 'this is Persia!' _Bah! Bah!_ What grass, what grain, what water!
_Bah! Bah!_

['If there be a Paradise on the face of the Earth,
This is it! This is it! This is it!'"]--(I. 209.)

(See _Fraser_, 405, 432-433, 434, 436.)

With reference to the dried melons of Shibrgan, Quatremere cites a history
of Herat, which speaks of them almost in Polo's words. Ibn Batuta gives a
like account of the melons of Kharizm: "The surprising thing about these
melons is the way the people have of slicing them, drying them in the sun,
and then packing them in baskets, just as Malaga figs are treated in our
part of the world. In this state they are sent to the remotest parts of
India and China. There is no dried fruit so delicious, and all the while I
lived at Delhi, when the travelling dealers came in, I never missed
sending for these dried strips of melon." (_Q. R._ 169; _I. B._ III. 15.)
Here, in the 14th century, we seem to recognise the Afghan dealers
arriving in the cities of Hindustan with their annual camel-loads of dried
fruits, just as we have seen them in our own day.

[1] The oldest form of the name is _Asapuragan_, which Rawlinson thinks
traceable to its being an ancient seat of the _Asa_ or _Asagartii_.
(_J. R. A. S._ XI. 63.)

CHAPTER XXVII.

OF THE CITY OF BALC.

Balc is a noble city and a great, though it was much greater in former
days. But the Tartars and other nations have greatly ravaged and destroyed
it. There were formerly many fine palaces and buildings of marble, and the
ruins of them still remain. The people of the city tell that it was here
that Alexander took to wife the daug