Page 69 - Arabian Gulf Intellegence

27
BAHREIN.
fetch it are commonly five or six, in a bark, lrom which one or two of
them dive to the bottom of the sea, having a bottle or two hung at their
girdles, which they fill with water, and then cork them tight; for at
about two or three feet from the bottom of the sea the water is sweet,
and of the very best quality. When those who are let down have filled
their bottles, they pull a small cord, which has one end fastened to some
person in the boat, and it serves as a signal for their comrades to draw
them up.
‘‘While the Portuguese were in possession of Ormus and Muskat,
cvery Terate or bark that went out to fish was obliged to have a pass-
port, which cost fifteen Abbasces, and they continually employed
several brigantines to sink those that had not got them ; but since the
Arabs have retaken Muskat, and the Portuguese have no strength in
the Gulf, every man that goes a fishing pays to the King of Persia
five Abbasees only, whether his success be good or bad. The merchant
also pays some small trifle to the king, on every thousand oysters.
“ The second pearl fishery is over against that of Bahrein, on the
coast of Arabia the Happy, near the city of Katifa, which, as well as
the surrounding country, belongs to an Arabian Prince. All the pearls
that are fished in these places are generally sold in the Indies, because
the Indians are not so difficult as we, and buy indifferently the rough
ones as well as the smooth, taking the whole at a fixed price. They
also carry some, to Balsora, while those that are carried to Persia and
Muscovy are sold at Bunder Congo, two days’ journey from Ormus.
In all these places I have mentioned, as well as in other parts of Asia,
they like better to see the water of a yellow cast than white, because
they say that those pearls in which the water is a little tinged like gold
always retain their brightness, and never alter, while those that are
white seldom last longer than thirty years without; when, owing as
well to the warmth of the country as the heat of the body, they take a
dull yellow colour.”
Notwithstanding the pearls found at Bahrein and Kateef approach a
little upon the yellow, they are yet in as much esteem as those of
Manaar (Ceylon) ; and throughout all the East they say they are ripe,
and never change their colour.
The history, according to Native tradition, may now be resumed from
the point at which it was relinquished.
The last, or Uttoobee conquerors, of Bahrein, who reduced it in
a. h. 1194 (a. d. 1779), came originally from Koweit or Grane. They
were formed by the intermarriage of three large tribes of Arabs, the
Beni Sabah, under Shaikh Sulaiman bin Ahmed; the Beni Yalahimah
T^d?rrSihalkh Jabir bin Uttoobee> and tbe Beni Khalifah, under Shaikh
Knalifah bin Mahomed.