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HISTORY OF THE INDIAN NAVY. 43
the shipping and batteries did so effectnally, that in less than
two months, the Portuguese capitulated to leave Ormuze, with
all the fortifications intire, and to carry nothing away but their
noble selves."
The Persians evaded the promised payment of a sum of
money, and also of a share of the booty, alleging counter
representations of the embezzlement of plunder on the part of
the English, and also the necessity of referring the matter to
—
the King. The account continues: "After business was
ended our miseries began, occasioned by the insufferable heat of
Ormuz and the disorders of our own people by drinking arrack
and other excesses no less injurious." Owing to these causes
the ships lost many men, and eventually left Ormuz on the 1st
of September, arriving at Swally Roads on the 24th.
As to the once famous city of Ormuz, it was given over to the
Persians, by whom it was soon stripped of all that was of value
and left to a natural decay, so that at the present day, if the "abo-
mination of desolation" is to be found anywhere, it may be seen,
at Ormuz, which yields to the moralist a striking example of the
vicissitudes of mundane greatness. That old and well-worn
apothegm, "Sic transit gloria mundi," may be applied to Ormuz
with not less force than it has served to point the tale of the
decline of Tyre, Babylon, or any of the great cities of antiquity.
The small island, whose luxury and wealth were once proverbial,
which is said to have boasted a population of forty thousand
souls, and was one of the chief marts for the connnerce of the
" gorgeous East," is now a barren rock, inhabited by some two
hundred souls, who eke out a precarious existence by the sale
of the salt which forms the sole staple of commerce.
Shah Abbas was overjoyed at the conquest, but all the mag-
nificent plans which he had formed for having a great seaport,
terminated in his giving his own name to Gombroon, which he
commanded to be, in future, called launder Abbas, or the Port
of Abbas. The hopes which the servants of the East India
Company had cherished from the expulsion of the Portuguese
from Ormuz and their other possessions, were also doomed to
disappointment. The agreement, made by Shah Abbas to obtain
their aid, by which it was stipulated that all plunder should be
equally divided, that each should appoint a Governor, and that
the future customs, both of Ornniz and Gombroon should be
equally shared, was disregarded, as regards the two first clauses,
from the moment the conquest was completed.
Another article of the treaty entered into between the allies
was that all Mahomedans made captive were to be given up to
the King of Persia, and all Christians to the English. .Mr.
Monnox, the agent of the East India Company, in reporting the
fall of the island, boasted of his humanity to the prisoners, but
added, " I must trust to Heaven for my reward, for the Portu-