"about two miles further off, he rendered useless,

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by throwing into it several camel loads of salt, "which he had brought with him for that purpose. "The Bagdad troops halted at the last of these wells, " and it may be conceived how much the men and "horses suffered from the adulterated quality of "the water. Here the Ottomans did not judge "it prudent to continue their march, lest Saoud might fall upon them by surprise. On the "other side, the Wahauby chief ventured not to "attack the Turks, for their artillery was very "formidable to him and his Arabs. Thus the "two armies continued three days within sight of "each other, in opposite ranks, only a single "horseman skirmishing occasionally in the plains "from each party. A parley was then established, a truce was concluded for six years, between "Saoud the Wahauby, and the Pachalik of Bagdad, " and both armies returned quietly to their respective homes."

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The observations I shall offer to the reader on this expedition, from which so much was

pected, and which so completely failed, and not only failed, but in fact produced consequences so lamentable to the Bagdad government, as to break Suleiman Pacha's spirit," and hasten his death, shall be but short.

If Mr. Burckhardt mean that Ally Pacha should have marched straight from the neigbourhood of the town of Grain to Dereyah, and so have taken no

notice of El Hassa, I cannot think, that having no friendly tribes in the intermediate space between the two towns to assist him, it would have been possible for him to have done so- for in that case, every drop of water, and every supply the army required, must have been transported with it; whereas, by keeping its march near and parallel to the shores of the Persian Gulf, the army was always within reach of its transports. Nor could the Kiah, with common prudence, have left Abdul Aziz with a strong garrison in El Hassa, and proceeded on to attack Dereyah; for in that case his communication with his fleet of transports would have been cut off, and he must have placed himself with a very limited quantity of supplies, between the father, in possession of one strong fort in his front, and the son, of another in his rear or on his flank. The failure of the expedition was entirely owing to the improper, spiritless, and cowardly manner in which Ally commenced the attack on El Hassa. I was assured by a person who accompanied the expedition, that the battery with which the Kiah pretended to breach the fort was in the first instance so placed, that had a breach been effected, the Turks would have had the river to cross in the face of the enemy; and in the next, that the batteries were erected at so great a distance from the walls of the fort, that most of the shells and balls never reached it; the former exploding in the air, and the latter, if any of them

did reach thither, producing no effect. When the attack on Lassa failed, it was easy to predict that the expedition could not be successful; and the only merit the Kiah had was patching up a truce with Saoud, by which the shattered remains of his forces were permitted to retire. Besides this, Mahommed Bey, an Arab, one of the pacha's council, accompanied the Kiah as his chief adviser: —this man had large territorial possessions in the neighbourhood of Bagdad, and had been long supposed to entertain a secret understanding with Saoud, which the event of this campaign, and the manner in which it was conducted, seemed rather to confirm than refute.

With the Kiah, on his return to Bagdad, a Wahauby officer arrived to receive the ratification from the pacha of the truce entered into by the Kiah, and I was invited by the paçha, I know not for what reason, to be present at this person's first audience. The palace at Bagdad is situated on the Tigris; and consists of three large square courts, besides the private or women's apartments of the pacha and the Kiah. The side of both these courts next the river is taken up with the public dewans or halls of audience of the pacha and his minister; and as both of these personages had been for some time prisoners at Schyras, during the reign of Kerim Khan, these rooms were splendidly fitted up, after the Persian manner, with pillars covered with small pieces of looking-glass, handsome coloured awnings, to let down occasionally, and fine marble

parapets. The court occupied by the minister was the southernmost, or the lowest down the river Tigris; one side of which contained a showy hall of audience, and the other three sides were appropriated to stables for his horses, barracks for his ordinary guard, and apartments for some of his officers. The intermediate square between the paçha's apartment and the Kiah's, contained the barracks of a corps called the Tiffungees, and the stables of the Georgians of the paçha's household, sheds for the artillery, and barracks for the artillerymen and bombardiers. The tops of all these buildings were furnished with parapets, on which troops could stand either for show or defence.

On the day appointed for the reception of the Wahauby envoy, nothing was omitted which the Turks thought could tend to give him a proper idea of the paçha's splendour and power; and the etiquette of that court was broken through by the appointment of Kiah, who was a pacha of two tails, to attend this envoy to his audience of Suleiman. The envoy entered the precincts of the palace in the square belonging to the Kiah; there the horses in rich furniture were standing at their pickets, and the minister's guards and household, gaily habited, filling the square and roof of the buildings. In the next square the Tiffungees were all drawn out, the paçha's horses standing at picket, the cannon run out from under their sheds, and the artillerymen and bombardiers standing by

them; besides which, in this square were several of the pacha's Georgians, mounted on superb horses, and magnificently clothed, playing at the jireed. At the gate of the paçha's court, which is something like a porte-cochère, were Caupoujie Bachi,* and all the officers belonging to his establishment, superbly dressed, who all walked a few steps from the gate to receive the Kiah and the envoy.

I had been desired to reach the palace previously to the envoy's entrance to the paçha's apartments, and I had done so very willingly, for I was exceedingly anxious to see as much of this extraordinary ceremony as I could; from the entrance of the Pacha's court to the foot of the steps which lead into the room where the pacha was sitting, a double row of Georgians, richly dressed, with the Kasnadar Agasi or treasurer at their head, were placed; and between them the Kiah and the envoy walked, till the Kiah arrived at the corner of the open room where the pacha was sitting above, and then he stopped immediately under his chief: the envoy proceeded towards the foot of the staircase which led into the room, and the high officers of the pacha's household prepared to perform the customary compliment of taking the envoy under the arms to assist him in mounting the stairs; this however he did not permit them to do; but with great gravity and dignity unsupported marched up the stairs, entered the room, and before any further

* Literally, "Guardian of the Gate."