Page 250 - Early English Adventurers in the Middle East_Neat

250 EARLY ENGLISH ADVENTURERS IN THE EAST

An agreement of a far-reaching kind was, as the upshot
of the negotiations, arranged between the English and the
Persian commander. Amongst the conditions were: (1)
that the spoils should be equally divided ; (2) that the yield
of the customs at Ormuz, when taken, should be shared in
future as between the two nations, the English being for
ever customs free; (3) that Christians captured should be
at the disposal of the English; and (4) that the Persian
commander should pay half the cost of the detention of the
ships.
As the first diplomatic instrument concluded with Persia
this agreement has special interest. It shows that British
rights in the Persian Gulf are no modern bogey reared to
warn off inconvenient rivals, as has sometimes been repre­
sented abroad, but have an ancestry going back three hun­
dred years to an episode in which Englishmen rendered
definite and valuable services to the reigning Shah.
Some days after the seal had been put to the document
embodying the foregoing terms, the English vessels
appeared off Ormuz and found the Portuguese fleet, con­
sisting of five galleons, two small ships and a number of
frigates, riding at anchor under the guns of the castle. The
!; Portuguese were in too strong a position to be attacked
with any hope of success, and they showed no disposition
ii to come out into open water, where the conditions would
be more equalized. The English commanders, therefore,
decided to devote their attention to the adjoining island of
Kishm, where the Portuguese had built a fort, and were
i
conducting a not unsuccessful fight against a large body of
Persian troops which had been sent against them. Blyth
and Weddell were the more disposed to make this transfer of
the scene of their operations as they learned that the garri-

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