'Travels in Assyria, Media, and Persia, including a journey from Bagdad by Mount Zagros, to Hamadan, the ancient Ecbatana, researches in Ispahan and the ruins of Persepolis, and journey from thence by Shiraz and Shapoor to the sea-shore. Description of Bussorah, Bushire, Bahrein, Ormuz, and Muscat, narrative of an expedition against the pirates of the Persian Gulf, with illustrations of the voyage of Nearchus, and passage by the Arabian Sea to Bombay.' [‎355] (386/582)

PORT OF BUSHIRE.
355
Bombay for Bushire ; but the owner of them, fearing that if they
were landed, the Governor's agents would seize them for their
master's use, on the usual condition of the long payments de
scribed, requested the captain not to land them here, and paid
additional freight for carrying them on to Bussorah, where even
an uncertain market was better than the ruinous one to which
they would come here, by falling into the Governor's hands.
Under such a system, light as the duties on merchandize may be,
commerce can hardly be expected to flourish; and the fact is, that
there is a disinclination to speculate beyond the actual consump
tion, and a fear and restraint in all commercial undertakings,
which is destructive of the activity that commerce requires to
make it advance, or even to keep it alive.
As a sea-port, Bushire has no one good quality to recommend
it. The anchorage of the outer roads in four fathoms water, is
at least six miles from the shore, and is so exposed to the full fury
of the north-west and south-east gales, which prevail here, that
whenever it blows a single-reef breeze, no boats can communicate
between the town and the vessel, and no supplies or information
be received ; while the ship herself rides as heavily as in the open
ocean, without the least shelter; and as the holding-ground is
good, it is not an uncommon event for vessels to part their cables
and be driven to sea. The inner harbour is only accessible to
ships drawing less than eighteen feet water ; and as the entrance is
over a bar across a channel of less than half a mile wide, such ves
sels can only go in with a favourable wind, and at the top of high
water in spring tides. The depth within increases to three and a
quarter and three and a half fathoms, and the holding-ground is
good: but here, though the sea is broken off by the projection Any method by which the earth’s curved surface may be transposed (or projected) on to a flat surface. of
the Rohilla Sands, a ship is exposed to all the force of a north-west
wind, and the distance is still three or four miles from the shore,
which renders communication by boats difficult, and often impos
sible, when it blows strong. It appears by some of the older de
scriptions of Bushire, that the Company's cruisers, and other small
2 z 2