Page 150 - Arabiab Studies (IV)

140 Arabian Studies IV
Abyssinian than those of Muscat. He saw countrymen
bringing in vegetables, mats, sheep-skins and laban and
returning with fish. The people look like monks, wearing the
same dress as 2,000 years ago. He saw two men fishing—one
lowered a net while the other dived below it and scooped it
up. One man was 100 seconds under water. The most
interesting thing in the bazaar was little pots of halwah. His
ship loaded with water, fire-wood, flour, butter, fruit and
vegetables.
1818 TAYLOR, Capt. Robert, in Bombay Selections, xxiv. There
would be little difficulty in cutting out and burning all the
ships at anchor. The forts are impregnable except to heavy
artillery but besieging Arabs could cut off the water which
comes from a well half a mile from the town and is taken to
the beach by an aqueduct.
1819 LOCH, Francis Erskine, Diary quoted in Belgrave, Sir
Charles, The Pirate Coast, London, 1966, 60-71 and passim.
The contrast of black and white hurt his eyes. Sayyid Said
had ‘the most agreeable and polite manner of any Arabian or
Persian I have ever met with’. The grapes and melons were
excellent, the pomegranates tasteless. One of the articles
brought from Zanzibar was ambergris which was also
sometimes found off Muscat: it was mixed with tobacco and
exported to Persia as an aphrodisiac. Some small boats
brought slaves, opium and cowry shells which are exported to
‘the Eastern Islands’ in exchange for Chinese goods. The
floors of the barastis are covered with tiny shells, then
carpeting and then matting. The bones of fish fed to cattle
sometimes stick in the animals’ tongues and have to be
extracted by experts. Loch was in Muscat in January and
again in May, leaving ‘to the inexpressible joy of all on board,
for the weather had been more oppressively sultry than can be
conceived’.
1819 SADLIER, Capt. George Forster, Diary of a Journey across
Arabia, Bombay, 1866, 5-21. Visited in May. Part of one of
the forts fell down as it returned a salute. Most of his account
deals with political and military discussions with Sayyid Said.
The Sayyid’s brother Salem entertained him but shut the
doors so that he should not be seen with an infidel.
1820 LUMSDEN, Lieut. Thomas, A Journey from Merut in India
to London, London, 1822, 61-70. Visited in April. The sea
side of Muscat has a ‘rather neat handsome appearance’
mainly because of the large houses belonging to the Imam but
behind it is ‘a poor dirty, miserable place, the houses being in
general very shabby, and the streets extremely narrow’. On
the land side was ‘an inferior wall’ with gates and towers: its
guards had hung their bows on the wall and were busy
making baskets. There were three slave sales a week with