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42 HISTORY OF THE INDIAN NAVY. —

says that Sir Thomas Roe, the British Ambassador to the
Persian Court, and Shah Abbas, agreed that if the latter " would
defray the charges of the ships that should come to his assistance,
give the English a free trade all over the Persian dominions,
custom free, and grant them one moiety of the customs raised
by merchandize in the Gulf, they would not only help to drive
the Portuguese out of Ormuze, but keep two ships in the Gulf,
to protect trade. All which was agreed to by both parties, and
sealed and signed by the King of Persia."
Of the expedition and the incidents of the siege, he says:
"The English forces consisted of five ships, about forty guns
one with another, and were well mann'd. The King of Persia
sent an army of forty or fifty thousand, with trankies for trans-
ports, to land them on Ormuze. The English soon destroyed
the Portuguese armada of light frigates and gallies, which were
hal'd dry on the land near the castle. The castle firing briskly
on them, sunk one of the English ships, whose artillery was
carried ashore, and put in batteries to annoy the castle, which
in sorrow of her desolation, late so populous ; these are preserved in urns or
earthen jars, and are most comfortable to drink in, and to give bedding a cool and
refi'igerating sleeping place, to lenify scorching Phaeton, who is there potent in
his flames and sulphur."
Shah Abbas the G-reat received at Ispahan the embassy sent by James I., of
which Sir Dodmore Cotton was the head, and Su* Thomas Herbert the historio-
grapher ; but both the former and Sir Robert Shirley, appointed by the Shah to
proceed as his envoy to the King of England, died within a few months. Sir
Thomas Herbert, whose Memoir is published in the " Biographia Britannia," is,
according to Sir John Malcolm, a reliable authority on Persian subjects, but his
religious intolerance is frequently apparent in his writings, which are couched in
quaint terms. As an instance, we would quote his description of a Mahomedan
saint, whose grave denoted him to be a man of great stature, "as a long-named, long-
boned, and long-since-rotten saint;" and again, speaking of one of the Persian
ministers, whose foreign title irritated him, he displays his intolerance in the fol-
lowing langxiage : " If God does not damn him for his heresies. He will assui-edly
do it for his long name, which always puzzled my Lord Ambassador."
Fryer, the writer already quoted, gives another version of the capture of
Ormuz, which, however, is at variance with fact in all its details, but we lay it
before our readers, as his curious and Httle-known work (which we were unable
to procm-e in the library of the Royal Geographical Society) is generally accurate
: —
and reliable. He says " The articles being ratified on either side, the enter-
prise is undertaken ; though of itself it was too great an action for one ship to
perform, or even a well-appointed navy, had they been upon their guard (or any
commander to promise without the consent of the King, his master), wherefore
the English betake themselves to stratagem, and gaining leave to careen their
ships under their guns, whilst the Portugals dreamt nothing less, they poiu'ed in
men (the Persians being hid under deck) at unawares, that they were put into
a consternation before they could think of their defence; whereby they became
masters presently of the castle, strengthened both by sea and land, by this un-
expected attempt vanquished, which otherwise was invincible ; being possessed
whereof by this rape, the rest of the island soon fell prostrate to the lust of the
surprisers, and the English, having got their booty, left the Christians to be
despoUed by the infidels, which thing, as it gained us esteem among the Persians,
was the utter ruin of the Lusitanian greatness, it ever since declining, and is
almost at its fatal catastrophe, for immediately upon this, theu- fleet before Muscat
is defeated, and they wei-e driven out of all their strong places in the Gulf, so
that the loss was greater than if they had lost Mozambique, from whence they
have their gold."