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It was a scene never to be forgotten, and one of which a photograph, which I took from a gentle eminence, gives but a faint idea. It was our last scene on Bahrein a fitting conclusion to our sojourn thereon. On two separate occasions we visited Maskat.
It is a wretched spot, a jumble of the scum of the East; Arab traders, a Banyan or two, a considerable Negroid population in the shape of soldiers and slaves, and Bedouin from the mountains, who come down with their skins and jars of clarified butter, to despatch in dhows to Zanzibar, Maskat, and other butterless places.
Maskat was then burnt and utterly destroyed; and 'having cut off the ears and noses of the prisoners he liberated them. The commentator concludes his remarks on Maskat as follows: 'Maskat is of old a market for carriage of horses and dates; it is a very elegant town, with very fine houses.
He had been a great deal on our men-of-war; he also took a present of horses from the Sultan of Maskat to the Queen, so that he could boast 'I been to Home, and alluded to his stay in England as 'when I was in Home. Abdullah always says chuck and never throw; and people unused to him would not take in that 'Those peacock no good, carboys much better, referred to pickaxes and crowbars.
Supposing the harbour restored to receive ships of moderate size, the Gara hills, rich in grass and vegetation, with an ample supply of water and regular rains, and, furthermore, with a most delicious and health-giving air, might be of inestimable value as a granary and a health resort for the inhabitants of the burnt-up centres of Arabian commerce, Aden and Maskat.
It is the principal entrepôt of the kingdom of Ormuz, into which all the ships that navigate these parts must of necessity enter. The hundred and forty years during which the Portuguese occupied Maskat and the adjacent coast town was a period of perpetual trouble and insurrection.
Since his accession, in 1889, he has been vacillating in his policy; he has practically had but little authority outside the walls of Maskat, and were it not for the support of the British Government and the proximity of a gunboat, he would long ago have ceased to rule.
There the sleepy noise of the wells, the shade of the acacias and palms, and the bright green of the lucerne fields, refreshed us, and we felt it hard to realise that we were in arid Arabia. As you emerge you come across a series of villages built of reeds and palm branches, and inhabited by members of the numerous nationalities who come to Maskat in search of a livelihood.
The ships are not navigated by Englishmen, and very few English merchants resident in India have ever speculated in the trade of the Red Sea, which is carried on almost exclusively with the capitals of Muselman merchants of Djidda, Maskat, Bombay, Surat, and Calcutta.
A few British subjects were scared, but not killed, and as all was over in a few weeks no one thought much more about it except those more immediately interested, and few paused to think what an important part Maskat has played in the opening up of the Persian Gulf and the suppression of piracy, and what an important part it may yet play should the lordship of the Persian Gulf ever become a casus belli.
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