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32 HISTORY OF THE LNDIAX NAVY.
be no doubt that this estimate is an exaggeration. From the
references to its wealth and grandeur by Sir Thomas Herbert,
and other travellers, and by our great poet, Milton, the place
was doubtless of sufficient importance to excite the envy of the
reigning Shah of Persia; while the injudicious conduct of the
Portuguese in excluding the English Company's ships from
trading to the Persian Gulf, or even entering its waters, raised
against them a powerful enemy, who, entering into an alliance
with the Persian potentate, supplied the naval part of an ex-
pedition which struck a fatal blow against Portuguese ascen-
dancy in the East.
Milton refers in noble verse to the grandeur and opulence to
which Ormuz attained under its native kings :
" Higli on a throne of royal state, wliicli far
Outshone the wealth of Ormuz or of lucl
Or where the gorgeous East, with richest haud,
Show'rs on her kings barbaric pearl and gold."
Merchants from every quarter of the globe proceeded to a
city where their property and persons were secure against the
injustice and oppression to which they were subjected in the
Native states of the mainland ; and to this small, barren,
island they carried their goods, and bartered them with traders
from Persia, Tiu'key, Arabia and India, without being sub-
jected to the impositions attendant on a residence in those
politically unsettled countries.
The name of Ormuz, or Hormuz, says Eraser in his " Travels
in Khorassan," appears formerly to have been applied to a
state on the Persian shore opposite the island now known by
that name. The chiefs were Arabs, and the fifteenth in the
succession, pressed by his enemies, retired, first to Kishm
and thence to Ormuz, then called Gerun, of which he received
a grant from the Sovereign of the island of Kais, or Kenn,
the extensive ruins in which attest the former existence of a
considerable city. Eor two hundred years the new city of
Ormuz enjoyed a high degree of prosperity, and, we are told,
extended its sway along both sides of the Persian Gulf nearly
to Bussorah : indeed, by one account, we find its limits des-
cribed as reaching from Cape Ras-ul-Had, including many con-
siderable cities, and that the chiefs, even those of Bahrein,
were all tributary to the King of Ormuz."*
* In tlie work of the Abbe T. G. F. Raynal, entitled " A Philosophical and
Political History of the Settlement and Trade of Europe in the East and "West
Indies," translated by J. Justamond, appears the following description of Ormuz
—
before its occupation by the Portuguese: "Ormuz became the cajiital of an
empire which comjjrehended a considerable part of Arabia on one side, and Perria
on the other. At the time of the arrival of the foreign merchants, it oflered a
more splendid and agreeable scene than any city in the East. Persons from all
parts of the globe exchanged their commodities, and transacted their business,
with an air of politeness and attention which are seldom seen in other places of