circumstance proved by the fact that he | only ones about here, for the Persians has to send his washing one hundred have a cat-like aversion to water. and thirty miles by steamer to be done, and can only obtain things fit to eat by the same medium; so that if by chance the steamer is late, he has to survive as best he can, dirty and unfed. From the Arabs, unconsciously, we have learnt a good deal ourselves, and added more than one word to both our chemical and maritime vocabulary. For example, "davit" is, in Arabic, a At the back of the modern town on crooked bit of wood, and through varithe road which leads inland, and which ous sources, like the word "alcohol," is the great commercial outlet for the it has found its way into our tongue. trade of Kerman and Yezd, are some The ruins of the old town of Ormuz interesting Portuguese ruins, a sixteen-are some little distance from Bunder sided building with Gothic arches, a Abbas to the east, at the mouth of a pyramid on a five-angled base thirty river now called Minab, and from the feet high, and many tombs of the quay an interesting view is obtained of European residents at Gomeroon. the important islets which shelter the Most of these buildings are lined with harbor. The island of Ormuz is there, coral and madrepores set in cement, called after the wealthy town on the the effect of which decorations is mainland, in accordance with a practice exceedingly curious, and made one common enough in these parts. When wonder if this could be the style of the inhabitants fled from the town to architecture Pliny alludes to when he the island in fear of attack, they carspeaks of walls and towers in the Per-ried with them the treasures and name sian Gulf, built of fossil salt. I was on the lookout for these all round the Gulf, and can only imagine that these unknown madrepores must have struck the early travellers as mere salt formation, sparkling as they do in the sunshine. There is, it is true, much rock salt on Ormuz, but I should imagine no people, however primitive, would be foolish enough to build a town of it. of their old home. Ormuz is the most barren of all islets; water has to be brought from the neighboring island of Khism, which has several villages upon it. There is a Portuguese fort thereon, and from it is to be procured plenty of rock salt and iron ore; but there is little now to mark, the site of the quondam "wealth of Ormuz and of Inde." Larah is another islet of this group, which, when the Bay of Bunder Abbas develops under British rule, may become important as an excellent point for protecting the entrances to the Gulf and our prospective line of trade. The modern town of Bunder Abbas is just a long, white streak of mud houses and bamboo huts along a flat shore, the mountains being some thirty miles away behind it. In summer it is intolerably hot, a heat but little mitigated by the wind towers, conspicuous The scenery along the coast northobjects in all the best houses, and the wards is weird and barren; a long line shade of a few palms, so that all the of flat coast with here and there a vilinhabitants migrate inland to get what lage, distinguishable by its half-dozen cool breeze they can from the moun-palm-trees, and miles behind are the tains. Bunder Abbas is a perfect hot-red mountains of Persia, the possible bed of gulf fever, guinea worm, of that class of boil which flourishes at Aleppo under the name of "button," and other delightful maladies for which this part of the world has obtained a worldwide reputation. Along the shore are drawn up the long-prowed, picturesque Gulf boats, with pretty carving on both their prows and their companions. The Arabs are first-rate sailors, the frontier between England and Russia Bushire is a truly horrible place, built at the edge of a spit of sand running out into the Gulf; its population is very mongrel, Arabs, Persians, Hindoos are all hopelessly mixed up therein. It has an English bank. What with its English Residency, English bank, English telegraph, English steamers' agents, and English men-ofwar, Bushire is as English as it could be wished. Lawn tennis may be seen upon its quays, ladies may play and ladies may ride without incurring more without the fish of their gulf the inhab- by far the most conspicuous building itants would inevitably starve. They in the town. eat it fresh, of course; they make stock-fish, which renders their bazaars almost insufferable; they collect seaweeds for food; they mix fish-bones with bruised date-stones, and boil them down for their cattle; the floors of their bamboo huts are covered with tiny helix shells, and the favorite game of men and boys is to spin a whelkshell like our top, and I really believe that this must have been the original pattern from which our domestic toy was made, a pattern brought home by those wonderful Portuguese of old. than an ordinary amount of staring Who knows? They cover their dag-from the Moslems. It is confidently gers and swords with shagreen; the doorposts of their huts are often made with whales' teeth; in fact, without the fish of their gulf these modern icthyophagi would soon perish. Somewhere about here is the gulf which Ptolemy in his map puts down as the "Ichthyophagorum Sinus," and I think, from the above facts, it would not be considered a misnomer even in these latter days. asserted that if the Karoun route is opened out into the heart of Persia, Bushire will cease to be the seat of our resident, and the capital of our Persian Gulf Protectorate will be removed to Fao or some other spot which has not yet got a name. If that time ever comes, and Bushire ceases to be the chief outlet for the Persian caravan trade, the place will not long survive, for it has no pretensions whatsoever to call itself a harbor; big steamers have to anchor at least two miles off land outside a sand bar, and if the sea is very rough landing is next to impossible. Bushire chances to be the outlet for the roads across the Kotals, and if it ceases to be that its reason for existence will cease also. Linga is somewhat of an important place, being very like Bunder Abbas when seen from the sea, but, as it is only an open roadstead, it is not likely ever to be a place of any great importance. This was until quite lately the capital of an independent Arab sheikhdom, but now it is under the immediate control of Persia. A little before reachLet us now visit another point of ing Bushire the Mund River falls into interest in the Persian Gulf, where the sea; it has been identified as the another petty monarch rules under Sittakos mentioned by Nearchus in his British protection, a spot which, if old voyage, a river which rises near Shi- Portuguese traditions go for anything, raz, and fertilizes several valleys in the is destined to become once more a place Persian Kotals. Bushire is, of course, of importance. This is the Bahrein the capital of the English protectorate Islands off the northern coast of Arain the Persian Gulf. Here our resi- bia, concerning which Albuquerque dent lives, who may be styled King of wrote to his sovereign, "with Ormuz the Gulf, and before whom all the and the Bahrein Islands in Portuguese petty potentates along its shores, be hands, the trade of the Persian Gulf they on the Arabian or Persian side, will be practically ours." In a conbow down. He has his steam yacht sular report written a few years ago, and his steam launch provided for him, | Major Durand says pretty much the a British man-of-war is appointed to be same thing, and the commercial value always in readiness to do his bidding, of these islands is further attested by and the British Residency, with its the Phoenician remains found thereon. flagstaff and extensive compounds, is This group is now governed by a VOL. LXXXIV. 4328 LIVING AGE. months of the year; and now that piracy has been abolished under a British Protectorate, they cannot continue their old courses of plunder and piracy, and cases of dispute between the tribes who own the pearl-banks are usually referred to the British resident, whose decision is final. sheikh of the Kaleefah family, a family | thousand heads of families make their of the Uttuli tribe of Bedouins which livelihood by pearl-fishing during four once held sway over a large portion of north-eastern Arabia, known as El Hasa, before the Turks turned them out of it and established their own feeble government there. Turkey, too, aspired to the lordship of the Bahrein Islands not so many years ago, but H.M.S. Osprey appeared on the scene and drove the Turks away and sent into exile in India such members of the El Kaleefah family as objected to our protectorate. Sheikh Esau bin Ali El Kaleefah now occupies the throne of the Bahrein Islands under British protection. The two low-lying islands, which are the principal ones of the little group, look like moss floating on the waters as you approach, with their feathery palm groves relieving the arid line of desert of which these islands are chiefly composed. The shallow seas around the group are the happy hunting-ground of the pearl-fishers and the wealth of Bahrein. These fisheries are as old as, and probably older than, the "Periplus" of Nearchus. A pearl-fishery in the Persian Gulf is thus mentioned by Isidorus of Charas, who probably lived under the Roman emperors. "In the Persian Sea is a certain island where abundance of the pearl-oyster is to be found. Wherefore rafts of reeds are stationed around the island, from off which the divers jump into the sea." Reed skiffs are still in use for the same purpose. The question of the English Protectorate in the Gulf will greatly affect the pearl-fishery, and the banks ought to be a source of considerable wealth to merchants, if systematically worked. The pearl-oyster is found in all the waters from Rao Mussendom to the head of the Gulf, but on the Persian side there are no known banks of value. They vary in distance from one to ninety miles from the low-lying shore of "Araby the Blest," but the deep-sea banks are not so much fished till the "Shemal" or nor'-westers of June have spent their force. The three seasons for fishing are known as "the spring fishing" in the shallow water, "the summer fishing" in the deep waters, and "the winter fishing,” conducted principally by wading in the shoals. Manameh is the commercial capital of the sheikhdom of Bahrien. It is, like most of these places on the Gulf, just a streak of low white houses and bamboo huts, about two miles along the shore. It is most unhealthy, and out of the spongy, sandy soil oozes brackish water with dangerous miasmatic effects in the summer heats. Albuquerque frequently mentions these fisheries in his letters, and they Sheikh Esau usually resides at a palare acknowledged to produce pearls ace he has on the Island of Moharrek, superior even to those of Ceylon. The and in the winter time this may be said inhabitants are exceedingly jealous of to be the seat of government. As we any European interference with their came well armed with introductions monopoly. One merchant, who came from the British resident at Bushire, with a diving apparatus and talked of a we naturally received a very hearty company, they promptly assassinated. welcome from Sheikh Esau and his The nigger slaves who do the diving courtiers. Nothing could exceed their naturally resent the use of a machine, kindness during our fortnight's stay on which would decrease the value of their the islands. They brought us presents labor; the rope-loop, the stone, and of food, of their quaint, long-beaked the horn for the nose, are all the para- coffee - pots, of their silver-studded phernalia they require. It has been bowls, of their old-world weapons, of intimated that in the Gulf thirty-five the camel's skin bucklers, and other race. queer things still in use among them, | islands have had a value peculiarly the only stipulation being that we their own. A vast sea of tumuli tells should speak a good word for them to of the existence here of a pre-historic the British resident at Bushire, and These we ascertained, by excatell him how kind they had been to us, vation and from the things we found in and would continue to be to any En- them, to be Phoenician, confirming the glishman who might chance to put his story of the father of history and other foot on their islands. classical writers, who asserted that the Bahrein proper is an island twenty-Phoenicians originally hailed from here. nine miles in length by twelve at its Next we have the Arab occupation, widest point. Moharrek is only five and the traces of many rich and decomiles long, like a narrow horseshoe. rated buildings of the date of the SelThere are a few other insignificant jukian power. Then we come to later islets with villages thereon. Alto-days, and find the Portuguese here, gether there are about fifty villages with a fort as strong as any in the Perscattered over all of them. Those re-sian Gulf, and Albuquerque's appreciamote from the coast are chiefly of the tion of the value of the islands. Now Persian sect of Mohammedans, namely, we have the English Protectorate, and Shiites, or followers of Ali, pointing several suggestions are afloat concernto Persian occupation in earlier days.ing the future commercial value of the At the coast they are mostly Sonni and islands. One would appear to be in Wahabi; this latter virulent sect of abeyance for a period, namely, that the Puritans having had great influence Bahrein should be the Cyprus of the here. On the Bahrein there are, how-Persian Gulf, the island fortress with ever, far more signs of art than we saw at Muscat. Ogival arches with fret work patterns, balconies, terraces, and latticed windows relieve the eye some-pearl-fisheries in English hands, which what, and the mosques have minarets, appears to be more likely to reach a though very small ones, dwarfed as it successful issue. were by the bigoted influence of the If the Persian Gulf should ever again Wahabi. I take it that El Hasa influ- rise to commercial importance and be, ence is decorative, whilst that of the as it once was, the highroad between Wahabi of Nejd is rigidly against any- the East and West, these islands must thing of the kind. Both these influ- become important, for the reason that ences have met on Bahrein with the the sea between them and the mainland above-mentioned results. Everything is too shallow for big vessels to ap of merit in Bahrein comes, they say, proach, and consequently goods would from El Hasa. These manufactures have to be unshipped to smaller craft are as yet an undeveloped source of at the islands, just as it was in ancient joy for the collector, such as their cof-days, when Gerrha, now Kateef, was fee-pots, their inlaid bowls, and their old-world saddles and weapons. The big island is as flat as a pancake, except in the centre, where are rising rocky hills, rejoicing in the high-sounding name of the Mountains of Mist, but not exceeding four hundred feet in altitude. Altogether a more dreary, uninteresting spot could not be imagined than Bahrein looked at from the top of the elevation. Just a patch of desert, relieved by palm groves where there is irrigation and water, set in the midst of the sea. Yet in all ages these which to protect the eastern terminus of the Euphrates Valley Railway. Another is for the development of the the starting point for the great caravay road across Arabia. It is as well, taking these points into consideration, that the islands should remain under British protection. J. THEODORE Bent. From The New Review. A VISIT TO THE MONASTERIES OF CRETE. THERE are few more picturesque spots than the quay of the little port of Canea, the seat of the government of Crete. Only small craft can get inside | stick, and tile, and refuse heap accumuits sea-wall, and when the north wind lating at the bottom. is strong large vessels do not even ven- Soon after sunrise, one beautiful Deture to lie in the roadstead outside, but cember morning, mild as a Northern make the safer anchorage of Suda Bay. April day, I started from Canea for the On the quay there is always a busy monasteries of the Akrotiri, between scene; Mussulmans and Christians, two wild-looking but good-natured clad alike in the loose blue knicker- zaptiehs, whom the governor had inbockers of the islander and the dis-sisted on providing as escort. The tinctive Cretan yellow boots, with road, bordered with aloes and those bright red sash and rush hat or fez, are juicy cactus plants which manage to busy loading and unloading the small thrive in a meagre soil, followed the boats which fetch and carry from the windings of the shore, skirting the steamer lying outside the mole; stal- hive-shaped mud and wattle huts of a wart negroes, like figures of bronze, colony of fellaheen established here by dressed in gaudy rags, stoop under Mehemet Ali during his tenancy of the heavy sacks and bales; the Turkish island, and after about a mile we customs officials look on, fingering reached the village of Chalepa (protheir strings of beads, or rolling ciga-nounced Halepa) the residence of the rettes. All round the semi-circle in the consuls, and of all the Europeans of dazzling sunlight rise pink and white and yellow houses, with peeling plaster, and the trellised windows of the women's rooms, and here and there a palm-tree overtops the courtyard enclosure. Inside the sea-wall lie two or three English brigs that have put in for a cargo of olive oil, and the graceful caiques are buoyed in a line near the old Venetian arches, where once they docked the Adrian galleys; behind the roofs rise the glittering white minarets; on either side yellow fortress ramparts close in the little bay, and beyond, overtopping all, are the lofty peaks of the White Mountains, now deep in snow, and doubly justifying their name. Every little coffee shop round the port is filled with a noisy company; groups are chatting and dis-ern shore of which, gifted with a perputing; a fish stall at the water's edge fect climate and sheltered from the is heaped up high with small red mul- torrid south winds of summer by its let and cuttle-fish, and buyers are central mountain spine, was intended cheapening the ware with a torrent by nature for a paradise, which the of passionate eloquence - picturesque passions of men have striven, alas, not dirt and decadence, and a seething hum altogether vainly, to unmake. There of life, for within the confining for- are no finer olive groves than those tress walls a large population, chiefly that border the slopes of the White composed of Mussulmans, is closely Mountains and of Ida, there are garcrowded together, and they do not dens where unrivalled oranges sweeten, willingly spread outside the limits of rich lands to cultivate, veins of ore in the Rastro, while beneath into the the hills, and scenes of beauty unsurminiature port, in spite of all that pol- passed in all these Southern seas. lutes it, the waters of the Egean roll After several hours' riding up and pellucid and clear, revealing every down over the undulating rock path, Canea. From here there is a fine view of the town, with its minarets gleaming against the purple of the western mountain ranges, and its golden lines of rampart built out into the blue water. The name of the village, which depends for water exclusively on what can be saved in cisterns during the rainy season, is due to the barren nature of the soil, for here begins the stony desert which, stretching eastward for several miles, terminates in the Akrotiri, a craggy, mountainous peninsula which forms an arm of Suda Bay. But it must not be imagined that this waste land, where the flat rock is forever showing through the thin surface layer of arid yellow soil, is in any way characteristic of Crete, the north |