Page 159 - Arabiab Studies (IV)

European Accounts of Muscat 149
Columbia, Boston, 1840, 52-4. The Boatswain’s arm was
never so fatigued as in Muscat where he had to administer
240 lashes to the cooks forhaving dirty pots.
TAYLOR, Rev. Fitch, A Voyage round the World, New
York, 1843, i, 161-92, with an uninspired picture. Taylor was
in the same ship as the two writers cited above. Muscat is ‘a
wild scene but unique and interesting’. Sayyid Said was away
so his son, aged 23, received the visitors. They entered the
palace courtyard which contained oranges and stunted
bananas down a passage decorated with weapons, Damascus
blades, ‘kingers, not unlike a Bowie Knife’ and flint-locks.
They were served coffee with crystallized sugar candy by an
old eunuch in small cups inside silver cups. The US sailor who
had died from the sun was carried out through the town and
buried outside the southern gate. The Sultan had 40-50
tolerable horses but most would not fetch $50 in New York.
Taylor saw an Arab ‘at his sunworship’ praying to the setting
sun. Captain Calfan said that there would be no objection to
Protestant missionaries but that any Muslim converted to
Christianity would justly be put to death. When a Beduin
cannot sell a cow, he takes it to a Banyan and threatens to
slaughter it at his feet unless the Banyan will buy it. The
author, to create a favourable impression ‘in view of the
interests of our commerce and of humanity* wrote a poem of
which two stanzas are here reproduced:
Sultan of Muscat: thy proud story
Lives where the day-beam latest falls,
And thy name famed in Eastern glory,
Is heard within the Western halls;
And far o’er seas to Oman’s waters
A nation thanks we bear to thee
And long their thousand sons and daughters
Will bless the Prince of Araby
For such as thee, in martial strains,
The notes of clarion should be swelling,
And minstrel harps in sybil-lines
Thy deeds in glorious verse be telling;
And storied rolls and fadeless pages,
Trace brightly thy name and chivalry,
And chronicle for deathless ages,
The generous Prince of Araby.
FONTANIER, V., Voyage dans Hnde et dans le Golfe
Pcrsique, Paris, 1844, Pt. II, i, 22-45. He walked from
Muttrah to Muscat in an hour. The Americans think that they
can make money out of Muscat, but really it is completely
dominated by the British and their villainous agent, Reuben.

J