one man, in what are now the Anglo-Persian Oil Company's fields in Arabistan. And we fell to considering how almost everything connected with the history of the Persian Gulf had that same flavour of the unexpected, the unusual, the curious or dramatic or quaint. He remarked that a narrative of " the Gulf " ought to be written from that point of view; and himself suggested the title which is at the head of this paper.

But how elusive is romance-" the poetry of circumstance." Is it a mere thing of the past " embellished by the fog of memory," as Conrad somewhere describes it? Is it something moribund, as Lord Curzon suggests? The Residency flagstaff at Bushire, which seems to dominate the little town, is very far from being moribund, and surely that is romantic enough for any Englishman. Or, if you must have some mouldy and ghost-like associations, what about that ancient and be-cobwebbed billiard room in the "Town Residency" in Bushire? Which one of the great line of political residents last played on the hallowed table, and last scanned that list of "rules of the Residency Billiard Club" still hanging, yellow with age, on the wall—one of which so delightfully lays down that whoever passes any uncivil or disagreeable comment on anyone's play shall at once cease to be a member of the club? Is it part of the romance of the Gulf that the recently retired Resident, when a junior political officer at Bahrain, not so many years ago, put out to sea one night in a small boat and chased a pirate up and down the waters for several days? Or that in the chart of the Island of Karrack made by Mr. Dalrymple, of His Majesty's navy, more than 100 years ago, "the north-west point of the compass was inserted where the west ought to be "-" a mistake," writes the indignant Captain Robert Taylor, R.N., in 1818, " dangerous to mariners and disgraceful to its author"? Is there romance in that square of parchment with the red, white and blue of the Union Jack in the corner-the "manumission certificate "-which is the carefully guarded treasure of many a Baluchi on the Persian side of the Gulf, and many an Arab or Somali pearl-diver working on the opposite coast? I do not know; but I do know that all these things are part and parcel of the life of the Gulf that of such is its history.

Things seem to happen in the Gulf that never happen anywhere else. The traveller who passes Cape Musandam on his

way up enters a different world, with a spirit, with traditions, with an atmosphere (in more senses than one) all its own. The very names of the places his ship will pass have a peculiar, an honest British ring about them: the Quoins (those naked rocks that guard the entrance to the Gulf), Elphinstone Inlet, Colville's Cove, and Biddulph's Group; the Great and Little Tombs ; Discovery Strait; Lucy Shoal; the Asses' Ears; the Hummocks of Kenn. And Basidu-that undistinguished spot at the end of the Island of Kishm-known to the captains of old as Bassidore. The charts of the fuel burning tankers which go up and down these waters on their lawful occasions nowadays do not show the names of the landmarks so familiar to the officers of His Majesty's navy 100 years ago: "Mr. Robinson's house," the "Hospital," the "Admiral's Bungalow," the "Billiard Room," which recall the days when Basidu was occupied by the naval and military force placed there to keep down pirates and to maintain order in that disorderly sea. Gone are the old charts, " dangerous and disgraceful" or otherwise there is nothing left in Basidu but a ruined pier and a more or less ruined graveyard with a few almost illegible English names on the cement slabs. Still less is left as memorial of those Englishmen who visited the Gulf in the earlier centuries; and it may be worth while to turn over some of the dusty records of the past and find out how it was that we came to be there at all.

This takes us back-for everything must have a beginning— to the year 1616, when the first English trading" factory was established at Jask. Before this step was taken, on the sole responsibility of the agents of the recently-formed East India Company at Surat, neither the English nor the Dutch had any footing in the Persian Gulf. The Portuguese had had it all their own way in those waters for over a hundred years, and their principal emporium, the island of Hormuz, at the entrance to the Gulf and near the modern Bandar Abbas, was one of the richest and most famous cities in the East. To the factors at Surat, disappointed with the way business was going in India, the prospect of a new market for their woollen goods in Persia was a pleasant surprise. Richard Steele, an English merchant, who had travelled to India overland from Isfahan, the Court of Shah Abbas, had brought encouraging news. He was sent back to Persia by the Council of Factors with one of their own men to get more

information and in particular to obtain, if possible, a Farman, or Royal Writ from the Shah "for the fair and peaceable entertainment of our men, ships and goods in all such ports as they shall arrive at." In due course this Farman was obtained from the Shah. Disregarding the opposition of Sir Thomas Roe, then our Ambassador at the Mogul Court, as a poor creature who was "far transported in error of opinion concerning merchandizing and merchants' affairs," the Council of Surat resolved to push on with their "scheme," and accordingly sent a commercial mission to Jask in the James, with orders to land goods at that port, proceed inland and establish factories in the interior.

With the subsequent tragic fortunes of the factors who landed at Jask in 1616-Connock, Barker and the rest-their quarrels, their misadventures, their death one after another, we are not concerned. But the expedition to Jask is important, because it was a beginning. From Jask it is only a step to the Persian Gulf; and that step had soon to be taken. Roe, who had disapproved of the Jask venture from the beginning, was man enough and large-minded enough ("of a nature not to hurt," as he describes himself) to accept the logic of facts and make the best of a situation for which he was not responsible. But his warning that Jask was too remote from the Persian markets to make trade profitable, and that in any case trouble and disturbances were bound to follow, was soon justified. Nobody was satisfied with Jask. But the Portuguese barred the way to the port of Gombroon (now Bandar Abbas), the recognized terminus for routes into the interior. Roe, ever cautious, was for compounding with the King of Spain: "That we will take Ormuz and beat the Portugals out of those seas,-these are vanities," he writes in 1617, "the company intend a trade, not a war." Five years later these vanities had come true. The Portuguese, in 1620, had taken the initiative by blockading Jask with a large fleet; they were attacked by four English ships and, though in greatly superior numbers, were beaten. The Persians, who " had long had a secret resolution to take Ormuz from the King of Spain (as Barker, the factor in Isfahan, wrote in 1619), then came into the open and solicited the help of the English. A joint expedition was sent against Hormuz. The victory was complete. By the 22nd April, if the Portuguese were not "beaten out of these seas," they had, at any rate, received a knock-out blow.

The English had now got a footing in the Gulf. The innocent expedition of the James, which Sir Thomas Roe had been at pains to explain to the Shah as not designed for the purpose of settling there, but merely "to show our forwardness and settle our entertainment," had ended in proving our forwardness to some purpose. In 1623 the British established their factory at Bandar Abbas, from which they were not dislodged for a hundred and forty years—and then only to settle even more obstinately at Bushire.

This is not a history of the Persian Gulf; not even of the rise and growth of British influence in the Gulf. It is merely an attempt to recall some of the incidents and something of the atmosphere of the past. We can therefore pass lightly over those one hundred and forty years of our residence at Bandar Abbas. They were not profitable years for our prestige or our trade in the Gulf; nor, indeed, for anything or anybody else. They were years of turmoil and struggle. The whole world was engaged in wars the British fought with the Dutch, and with the French; the Persians fought with themselves and with the Turks; the Arabs of Muscat appeared on the scenes early in the eighteenth century with their fleet of five galleons and their 1500 armed men, and fought with anybody they could. Our situation in Persia during this restless century was precarious in the extreme; our trade staggered. The Dutch, who had taken advantage of our defeat of the Portuguese in 1613 to open a factory at Bandar Abbas, had by now got much influence in the Gulf, and did us all the harm they could-and that was considerable, for they were unscrupulous in the matter of intrigue and the bribery of Persian officials: navigation is reported as growing increasingly difficult owing to the depredations of the Muscat Arabs.

The history of Persia itself during these years was a continual see-saw-periods of comparative quiet, when a Shah Abbas or a Nadir Shah was on the throne, alternating with periods of anarchy: the only fairly constant factor being the unpleasant and humiliating treatment meted out to the British merchant, which at one time (about the middle of the seventeenth century) got so bad that the Court of Directors was almost persuaded to abandon Persia altogether. In 1664 the Council of Surat sent the following letter to the directors :

Right Worshipful Company and our Honourable Friends: We read in the front of your letter the great expectations you have of being

better dealt with in Persia grounded upon a letter from Gombroon (i.e., Bandar Abbas) of the 3rd May, subscribed by Mr. Cradock and Mr. Cranmer that the King had commanded the Shawbunder (Governor of the Port) to pay you the full moiety of the customs; and that both he and the other officers were more than usually respective (sic) to them. Sure we are there hath been nothing of real performance in any one particular and wonder they so little understood the temper and dispositions of these people so as to thus highten your hopes which certainly they would not have done had they thoroughly conversed with the perfidious practices of that nation. . . . And of this, Mr. Cradock hath since felt the sad experience in the dishonours and affronts put upon our people, the Shawbunder lately commanding to seize upon your Broker and in his presence to bee most grievously beaten that he was carried away doubtful of life. And yet that was not sufficient. Whilst hee was in the cure of the bruses he had received, hearing there was hopes of recovery the Ruffian sent for him again, drags him out of his house, adding to his sores and afterwards laded him with irons and kept him close prisoner until he had satisfied his covetuous desires with some hundreds of tomans-all this while Mr. Cradock not being able to helpe him in the least; soe insolent they are, being it is said animated by the Dutch who are in great esteeme. In our opinions nothing but a visible power can possibly redeeme and bring us to our former repute.

Even the good-natured Mr. Cradock had apparently come round to this way of thinking, for he is quoted in the same despatch as having solicited the Surat Council to "express your dislike in a hostile way." This was the burden of yet another letter written from Surat seven years later :

Unless your Honours shall please to vindicate and maintain your right by open force the King of Persia will soon defeat you of that small stipend of customs which they have hitherto allowed you; for that daily they impose on your privileges and by the continued molestation which they put upon the merchants doe endeavour to destroy the Port of Gombroon. . . . It is necessary for you to let the Persian know that you risend their proceedings.

Again the president and council at Surat, writing to Thomas Rolt, their agent at Bandar Abbas, in 1672, say :

We are not wanting to take into our consideration the unjust force which the Persian puts upon you, and doe agree with you in our judgment that till the Companie shall please to make use of force to maintain their right they must never expect that the Persians either by presents or by a forbearance will be persuaded to do them justice.

This unflattering estimate of the Persian character is very like that quoted by Sir John Malcolm in his "Sketches of Persia.”