'Visit to Lingah, Kishm and Bunder Abbas by Lieutenant-Colonel Lewis Pelly, printed article of an account read before the Royal Geographical Society of London 27 Jun 1864' [‎3v] (6/14)

2 Pelt jy's Visit to lAngah,Kishm.^
sianised Arabs, and some Persians also have been attracted from
the upper country for labour on the spot, or as carriers into the
interior. There are also some twenty Hindoos residing in the
)lace as agents for firms in Bombay or Kurrachee. It appears
;:rom this statement, as well as from the conversation of the merchants
themselves, that the little commercial importance of this place is
due to its being conveniently situated as a point of agency An office of the East India Company and, later, of the British Raj, headed by an agent. for
trade coming from India and seeking a market along the Arabian
coast of the Gulf, and to the Persian territory in the immediate
neighbourhood of Lingah and towards Lar. ^Goods are landed,
and, if prices pay, are sold on the spot and are sent towards the
interior at the risk of the purchaser. Lingah merchants consider
the road through the Eliant haunts too insecure to permit of their
trading themselves with the interior. It is, however, I think, obvious
that, unless owing to accidental circumstances, Lingah, from its
geographical position and from its dangerous anchorage, would be
quite unable to compete with the inland trade of Bushire or Bunder
Abbass; and its statistics show that the bulk of its trade is with
the maritime Arab ports, goods being reshipped thither in small
coasting craft, according to demand and opportunity. Specie and
pearls, and perhaps a little salt-fish, are, I believe, the only returns
from the Arab ports. About eight or ten boats are engaged at
Lingah for the pearl-fishery. There may be some 150 native craft
of all sizes belonging to the people of the place; and it is remark
able that, although labour is cheap and efficient in boat-building
along the western coast of India, yet the builders at Lingah prefer
to import their wood from India and build their buglas (which seem
of capital construction) on their own beach.
F rom Bassidore I crossed the island of Kishm to visit some salt-
caves and naphtha-springs. The road, after leaving a ledge of rock
on which Bassidore is built, descends a few feet into a plain, sprinkled
here and there with a few date-trees, and passes the ruins of an old
Portuguese fort, situated on a detached rock and overlooking the
Clarence Straits. After some 7 miles you reach the village of
Gooree, and thence wind among low hills for about 5 miles more
into the plain of Kownee, distant only a mile or two from the
southern shore. Leaving Kownee you pass eastward along a valley
towards a range of dark-red hills : these form the salt-range. The
general formation of the island, which, like that extending all along
this and the Mekran coast to Kurrachee, is a coarse sandstone grit
and conglomerate, overlying blue lias marl,* now suddenly ceases,
and the salt formation, which seems to extend some way into the
interior of the island, abuts on the shore line, with which it runs
parallel at a few hundred paces' distance for some 5 miles, when it
' I speak of the prevailing character of the region, a good section of which is
laid bare in the cliff at Mini era Point, near Kurrachee.