Page 81 - Arabian Gulf Intellegence

CONCLUDING REM AUKS. 39

and hardy mariners, which they have since turned to purposes so
different from these civilized habits, the primary cause of their
aggrandisement.
From this the British were among the first sufferers, by the attack
on one of their smallest cruisers, assailed in the roads of Bushire with
ammunition which had, in an hour of friendly communication previous
to the attack, been solicited and bestowed on the chief of the assailing
fleet. These hollow friends were, however, beaten off, with consider-
able loss on their side.
To proceed, then, on a plan of methodical and comprehensive detail,
it were perhaps advisable, in order to prove their addiction to com­
mercial pursuits, to premise an account of these tribes in the days of
their upright and honorable exertion, previous to their conversion to the
Wahabee faith, which paved the way to every subsequent atrocity.
These, and other particulars given in the course of this Report, relating
to the Arabs of the Persian Gulf, are the results of personal investiga­ i
tion, or of cautious gleanings from Natives of authority, and capable of
close observation.
They were originally employed, as these authorities state, in
commercial enterprise, in the cultivation of extensive groves of the date
tree, and the pursuit of a lucrative pearl fishery. The sale of the yearly
produce of their date grounds placed the proprietors in possession of an
equivalent amounting to Rs. 80,000, of which the governing power
received a tenth, or Rs. S,000. Their fleets consisted of large boats, as
the Dow and Buggalow, and smaller ones, or the Buteel and Bugareh.
The former visited the ports of India, Yemen, Africa, Sind, Kutch,
Muskat, and Bussora, and in each of these different vovagesthe value of
a single share of a seaman was as follows : in the voyage to India, from
Rs. 50 to Rs. 60 ; to Yemen, Rs. 80; to Africa, Rs. 40 ; to Sind and
Kutch, from Rs. 25 to Rs. 30; to Muskat, Rs. 12 ;—in the voyage
to Bussora they gained nothing, but shipped a cargo of fish and dried
dates for the different ports above mentioned. The lesser vessels traded
generally to Bahrein and Kateef, which gave a single dividend to each
sailor of from Rs. 4 to Rs. 6. They also used to visit Bussora, and load
with grain for Ras-ool-Khyma, and its adjacent tributaries, which paid
each seaman one share of Rs. 10; as did the voyages to the Hoolch
ports of Congoon, Aseeloo, and Kishm, from Rs. 2 to Rs. 3.
From the produce of each of these voyages, the governor was entitled
to one share, equal to that of a seaman, at which time the number of
large vessels was sixty, and of the lesser ones two hundred.
Their pearl banks, which were famous for their extent, and the
admirable quality of their produce, lay from three to six miles off shore,
in six to seven fathoms water, on which four hundred boats of different