“Where is Gulistan, the Land of Roses?

Not on hills, where Northern winters

Break their spears in icy splinters,

And in shrouded¹ snow the world reposes²;

But amid the glow and splendor³,

Which the Orient summers lend her,

Blue the heaven above her beauty closes:

There is Gulistan, the Land of Roses.

Northward⁴ stand the Persian mountains;

Southward spring the silver fountains,

Which to Hafiz taught his sweetest measures.

Clearly ringing to the singing,

Which the nightingales delight in,

When the Spring, from Oman winging

Unto Shiraz, showers her fragrant⁵ treasures

On the land, till valleys brighten.”

—Taylor.

By far the most interesting and valuable part of Mr. Taylor’s experience as a traveller was in India, China, and Japan, if we consider only the welfare of his readers. But so far as its influence upon him was[207] concerned, its impression was far less marked than that in Europe and Egypt. At the time he left Gibraltar for Egypt, the lands of India, China, and Japan were comparatively little known to the reading communities in America. Even India, which had so long been the idol⁶ of England and the El Dorado for all her adventurous⁷ spirits and valorous soldiers, was a country with which America had but little communication, and in whose people Americans took but little interest. It was a neglected field.

Mr. Taylor, in a letter to a friend in Washington, laid much stress upon the importance to American commerce of an accurate description of those lands, and hoped to be the instrument by which an interest in such enterprises might be

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