Page 241 - Early English Adventurers in the Middle East_Neat

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THE ENGLISH IN THE PERSIAN GULF 241

of Bom Jesus with its magnificent shrine of St. Francis
Xavier would not have disgraced a European capital, and
it was only one of many superb religious structures of
which the city could boast, for the Inquisition, then in the
plenitude of its awful power, cast an unholy lustre over
the settlement. Men in whose veins the most aristocratic
blood of Portugal ran gave to the local society a distinc­
tion uncommon in an Eastern settlement. On all hands
were evidences of refinement and luxury, and of the splen­
dours of a powerful seat of government. Even to-day,
when Goa is little more than a heap of mouldering ruins,
it is possible to realize in the survivals of the past some­
thing of the dignified life which was once lived in this the
earliest scene of European colonization in India. And
Goa, of course, was only one of several important posses­
sions which Portugal then owned in this region. In
Southern India were Cochin and Cannanore and farther
South was the beautiful island of Ceylon which the Portu­
guese dominated from strongly fortified bases at Colombo,
Jaffnapatam and elsewhere. Away northward in the
Persian gulf were Ormuz and Gombroon, the latter the
modern Bunder Abbas, both centres which in their day
had been the seats of a great trade. It is with the two last-
named settlements that the narrative has now to deal.
At a very early period after their first visit to Surat,
the English had turned their attention to the Persian Gulf
trade. At that time Europe, owing to the glamour of old
associations, entertained an exaggerated idea of the possi­
bilities of the route through the Gulf as a channel for the
prosecution of Eastern trade. Its historic past was cer­
tainly a great one. From a very remote era it had been
used as one of the main ocean highways for the transit of
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