نسخة مذيلة من "بلاد فارس والشأن الفارسي" بقلم جورج كرزون، مع أوراق مدرجة [و‎‎٧‎٣‎٥] (١٨١٤/١٤٨٦)

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THE PERSIAN GULF
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on the threshold of the Gulf, to which it commands the entry from
the east, and opening up long-sanctified routes of communication
into the interior of Asia as far as the yellow Oxus and the snowy
Hindu Kush, its harbours have for centuries been battled for by
European nations; have flown in turn the flags of Portugal, the
Netherlands, Great Britain, Arabia, and Persia; have teemed with
argosies of wealth, upon which historians love to linger ; and now, ^
in their last state, though shorn of all splendour, and protesting ) (C { f h
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against their degradation with the mute appeal of ruined fortress r
and battered tower, still pour for the most part into foreign garners
the wealth which their native peoples have never had the spirit or
the capacity to retain for themselves. At Lingah and Bunder
Abbas the chief traders are Hindu Buniahs from Shikarpur and
the Sind province; the customs are commonly farmed by them ;
and the vessels that all but monopolise the carrying trade are
those of the British India line. In this interesting quarter I am
tempted to halt a little longer upon sites that have been celebrated
by the travellers and historians of more than ten centuries, even
though their glory be chiefly centered in the past.
Lingah is the first of these ports that is visited from the west,
309 miles distant by sea from Bushire. It is the prettiest and
most attractive of the Gulf ports, if prettiness can, indeed,
be predicated of any of these maritime towns. A long
line of yellow houses, glittering in t he recess of a wide bay; a
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Lingah
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fringe of tufted palms behind it; a stretch of desert; and then the
mountains, rising first in strange, twisted contortions, in whose ,^ f
folds and hollows a violet mist*seems perpetually to tremble, and
further away, in a long rugged wall against the sky, a pale pink, A- u ^ .< « r
and sometimes a silver grey in hue—this is the agreeable pano- ^ - /ac
rama that is visible from the sea. The mountain scarp behind A//
rises in its highest points to 2,900 and 3,900 feet, one of these
being marked on the nautical chart, presumably by some old sea-
captain, as Grubb’s Notch. The anchorage is in three fathoms of
water, at a distance of about a mile from the land. Alone among ^ '
the Gulf ports, Lingah possesses a small wet dock, defended by a
wall from the sea, and filled or emptied by the tide. A couple of
dozen vessels, ranging from buggalows down to small craft, were
lying in it at the time of my visit. The sloping beach of sand is
also utilised for shipbuilding purposes. Three or four of the
largest buggalows, ranging up to 300 tons burden, are built here
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