ds
obtained a passage in an English ship which was to cruise in the Persian
Gulf against Arab pirates. Here he was allowed to have public prayers
every evening, and on the 22nd of May was landed at Bushire, where he was
lodged in the house of an English merchant with an Armenian wife.

The time for a journey to Persia was so far favourable that the Shah,
Fath' Ali, who had succeeded to the throne in 1794, owed England much
gratitude for having interfered to check the progress of Russian conquest
upon his northern frontier. After Persia had long been closed from
foreign intercourse by the jealous and cruel Shah, Aga Mohammed, Fath'
Ali, a comparatively enlightened prince in the prime of life, willingly
entertained envoys and travellers from European courts, and Sir Gore
Ouseley was resident at Shiraz as British Ambassador. Yet it was not
considered safe for a Frank to travel through Persia without an Oriental
dress, and, accordingly, Martyn had to provide himself with the tall
conical cap of black Tartar lambskin, baggy blue trousers, red boots, and
a chintz coat, allowing his beard and moustache to grow, and eating rice
by handfuls from the general dish. Meantime he was hospitably
entertained, the Armenian ladies came in a body to kiss his hand, and the
priest placed him beside the altar in church, and incensed him four times
over, for which he was not grateful on being told "it was for the honour
of our order."

An English officer joined company with him, and a muleteer undertook
their transport to Shiraz. It was a terrible journey up the parching
mountain paths of Persia, where Alexander's army had suffered so much,
with the sun glaring down upon them, never, in that rainless belt around
the Persian Gulf, tempered by a cloud. They travelled only by night, and
encamped by day, sometimes without a tree to spread their tents under.
The only mode of existing was to wrap the head in a wet cloth, and the
body in all the heavy clothing to be had, to prevent the waste of
moisture; but even thus Martyn says his state was "a fire within my head,
my skin like a cinder, the pulse violent." The thermometer rose to 126
degrees in the middle of the day, and came down to about 100 degrees in
the evening. When exhausted with fever and sleeplessness, but unable to
touch food, it was needful to mount, and, in a half-dead state of
sleepiness, be carried by the sure-footed mountain pony up steep ascents,
and along the verge of gi