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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
These Islands, from which the Portuguese were expelled by a British fleet aiding Shah Abbas in 1622 A.D., and of which the advantages were tersely put to me by a native the other day in the words, “The land is silver and the sea is pearl,” are situated generally in lat. 26° and long. 50°, the exact position of the Portuguese fort on the larger island being given as lat. 26° 13′ 53„ N., long. 50° 31′ 45„ E. They are surrounded by shoal water on every side, which greatly adds to the beauty of the place. Thus, on looking out to sea on the morning of a clear sky and a fresh nor'-wester, it would seem as if Nature, at all times lavish of effect, had here, however, exhausted every tint of living green in her paint box; and then, wearying of the effort, had splashed an angry streak of purple into the foreground. The water itself is so clear that you can see far down into the coral depths, while springs of fresh water bubble up through the brine, both near the entrance of the harbour and at several other places along the coast.
page 190 note 1 I have marked the lowest line of survey, east and west of north in my tracing from the chart as supplied to Her Majesty's Navy vessels.
page 190 note 2 By Commander Constable and Lieut. Wish, resurveyed in 1872–74 by Messrs. S. Thompson and Cuthbert, of Her Majesty's schooner Constance.
page 191 note 1 I had some pearl divers with me who went down and walked about on the bottom; they then looked like pigmies about a foot high.
page 191 note 2 Names of two villages a mile or so apart on the top of the circle of cliffs.
page 193 note 1 I have since heard from Abdullah bin Rijjab, one of a rich firm of brothers, engaged in the pearl trade, that when he was a boy he remembers seeing the officers of a French and an English frigate accompanied by a Persian (Ailchi) Ambassador digging and turning over stones in this very place. He did not know with what results.
page 193 note 2 The well of the Abú-Zeidán is worth mentioning. It springs under an arch of stone, which serves as the foundation of part of the walls of a small mosque. The water is beautiful and warm in the cool weather, being said to become cold in the hot. I suppose the change is merely in the temperature of the air. A stone pillar with two circular stones as a basement rising from the water supports part of the superstructure. The pattern on the outer arch is peculiar.
page 196 note 1 Vincent makes Gerrha to have been on the site of the present Katif, and as to deducing Tyrians and Aradians from the names of these Gulf islands, says simply, and rather unfairly, that it is consonant with the perpetual vanity of the Greeks, who reduce everything unknown to the standard of their own fabulous history. I think that this place may, amongst other reasons, have drawn importance from its situation with regard to the monsoon and the peculiar winds of the Gulf itself, as well as perhaps from the debouchure of a mouth of the Euphrates? With regard to this, see some account of monsoons, etc. in Vincent's preliminary observations to the “Voyage of Nearchus.”
page 199 note 1 Some of the outlying blocks on the other large mounds (already noticed) are of sandstone, and hare been carefully shaped; perhaps the architects were equal to shaping sandstone, but not to shaping the harder limestone, or at any rate did not think that it was worth while to do so.
