outlying islet of Henjam at its south-eastern end. Then, after passing the crumbling ruins of the old Portuguese fort at Kishm town, on the east of the island, we rounded into Clarence Strait and anchored off Laft. In 1622 we sent five ships-or the Honourable East India Company sent them-to assist the Persian forces in besieging the Portuguese at Kishm. The Persians, it seems, wanted their island back, and wanted the Portuguese trade. Hence the alliance. Both of us got what we wanted, though in doing so we suffered an unexpected loss. William Baffin, the famous Elizabethan Arotio navigator of Baffin's Bay, was killed at the beginning of the siege of Kishm by a shot from the Portuguese castle. He certainly went in for extremes of climate during his wanderings, and would have been better advised to have stuck to the icefields and the snow!

Laft, the delightful seaside resort off which we now found ourselves, is a harbour completely enclosed, easily accessible, fairly deep for anchorage, strategically well-positioned, and defensible without difficulty yet, with all these virtues, it is, like Naaman the Syrian, "a leper." Not only is the fresh-water supply of the most exiguous character, but the position has the reputation a true one, for we tested it-of being the hottest place in the whole Persian Gulf, and that is to say, in the whole world. Not a breath of outside air, not even the Shamál, gets into it. We sat

and dripped helplessly all day, completing a vicious circulation of moisture by pouring down inside us bottle after bottle of partly-cooled aerated waters, which panting Goanese stewards made haste to supply. One could do nothing else but drink, and without liquid one would have become as a desicoated fruit, dried-up, mummified. I have thus consumed, in a single day at Laft, as many as twelve large bottles of the most uninspiring "pop"; and this was well below the average official thirstiness of the Sphinx. When night-time came I reposed on a grass-mat laid on my chart-table on deck, olad in the absolute minimum of clothing-in bathing-drawers, to be exact for pyjamas about one were as abhorrent as a mattress beneath, while the temperature slowly rose, after nine o'clock, until it was well up in the hundreds by 2 A.M. The heat then steadied, and between 3 and 4 A.M. there was a blessed, blessed time when it really fell a few degrees. Then came untortured rest. But with the first orack of dawn, buzzing flies attended the death-bed of sleep, and galvanised their limp victim into sufficient activity to arise, don such raiment as might satisfy the conventions, and start off in a boat, armed with sextant and theodolite, for surveying work "in the field." The temperature then might be as low as 97°; but by 8 A.M. it would be well up in the hundreds once more, and, in order to avoid a heat-stroke, it was necessary to return on board the ship, to the shelter of

treble awnings. Nothing could be done outside that proteotion until about six o'clock in the evening, when an hour might be snatched before darkness closed the scene. Laft could not therefore be considered as a possibility for a "naval base," in spite of its other decided advantages.

It was late in June when we steamed back through Clarence Strait, and anchored at its eastern entrance off the town of Bandar Abbás, which stands on the mainland here, and is faced by that famous island, Hormuz. Basra at the head of the Gulf, and Hormuz at its mouth, are names to take you back, as on a Magic Carpet, accompanied by Sindbad the Sailor, to a sandal-scented and romantic past. Until the seventeenth century Hormuz was the Mart of the East, where all the riohes of India met in exchange with the pearls of Bahrein, with the attars, the pungent gums, and spicery of Araby the Blest; with dyed garments from Basra, with silks and carved work, damascened weapons, and delicate filigree of silver and gold from Baghdad the Fortunate. Ichabod! The glory has departed, indeed! Not a vestige now remains of it all, save dry ruins, houses crumbled so small that the few poor fishermen who still cling to the place cannot utilise them as dwelliugs, but make for themselves rude wigwams of date-palm leaves. On a low point above the village is the battered but still threatening remnant of a fort built by Albuquerque,

when, in September 1507, the Portuguese seized the place and its riches, and reduced its inhabitants to subjection, with no circumstance omitted of audacity and cruelty. There the Portuguese remained, in complete lordship, until 1622, when, after a siege of three months, Hormuz fell, with Kishm, before John Company's ships, aided by a Persian force. Beside the ruined fort there are many ancient tanks, now empty and dry, out into the rooky heart of the island. In the days of its splendid youth, water for these reservoirs was brought off in skins by boat from the river Minab, ten miles away. There is no other moisture obtainable, save for a saline trickle from the hills after rain. The general appearance of the little island is very remarkable. It consists of a rounded lump of hills, with three or four central conical peaks, seven hundred feet high. The lower parts, all completely barren, are striped, and patched, and barred with a geological "dazzle - painting" in oohre and red, brown, purple, and buff, while the surmounting cones, in strong contrast, are pure white. The whole effect is that of some monstrous pudding, standing on the blueand-white plate of the sea, over whose apex has been poured (in pre-war days!) a large jug of thick cream.

A telegram was waiting us at Bandar Abbás, which ordered us to Maskat, to await the next mail steamer, which was bringing written orders for further survey

treble awnings. Nothing could be done outside that protection until about six o'clock in the evening, when an hour might be snatched before darkness closed the scene. Laft could not therefore be considered as a possibility for a "naval base," in spite of its other decided advantages.

It was late in June when we steamed back through Clarence Strait, and anchored at its eastern entrance off the town of Bandar Abbás, which stands on the mainland here, and is faced by that famous island, Hormuz. Basra at the head of the Gulf, and Hormuz at its mouth, are names to take you back, as on a Magio Carpet, accompanied by Sindbad the Sailor, to a sandal-scented and romantic past. Until the seventeenth century Hormuz was the Mart of the East, where all the riches of India met in exchange with the pearls of Bahrein, with the attars, the pungent gums, and spicery of Araby the Blest; with dyed garments from Basra, with silks and carved work, dam. ascened weapons, and delicate filigree of silver and gold from Baghdad the Fortunate. Ichabod! The glory has departed, indeed! Not a vestige now remains of it all, save dry ruins, houses crumbled so small that the few poor fishermen who still cling to the place cannot utilise them as dwelliugs, but make for themselves rude wigwams of date-palm leaves. On a low point above the village is the battered but still threatening remnant of a fort built by Albuquerque,

when, in September 1507, the Portuguese seized the place and its riches, and reduced its inhabitants to subjection, with no circumstance omitted of audacity and cruelty. There the Portuguese remained, in complete lordship, until 1622, when, after a siege of three months, Hormuz fell, with Kishm, before John Company's ships, aided by a Persian force. Beside the ruined fort there are many ancient tanks, now empty and dry, cut into the rooky heart of the island. In the days of its splendid youth, water for these reservoirs was brought off in skins by boat from the river Minab, ten miles away. There is no other moisture obtainable, save for a saline trickle from the hills after rain. The general appearance of the little island is very remarkable. It consists of a rounded lump of hills, with three or four central conical peaks, seven hundred feet high. The lower parts, all completely barren, are striped, and patched, and barred with

geological

"dazzle - painting" in ochre and red, brown, purple, and buff, while the surmounting cones, in strong contrast, are pure white. The whole effect is that of some monstrous pudding, standing on the blueand-white plate of the sea, over whose apex has been poured (in pre-war days!) a large jug of thick cream.

A telegram was waiting us at Bandar Abbás, which ordered us to Maskat, to await the next mail steamer, which was bringing written orders for further survey

We sailed at once, rounding Cape Masandam, the Arabian gate post of the Gulf, where it is only twenty-five miles across to the Persian shore, The extremity of the point is a tattered peninsula of hills whose heart is penetrated by deep volcanic fiords, the whole being joined by a narrow neck to the mainland to the southward. On its barren slopes there olings a settlement, said to be formed of the last remnants of the aboriginal inhabitants of Arabia, children of Shem, undiluted by the restless Bedouin blood of Ishmael, the race now dominating the remainder of that highly undesirable land.

It was refreshingly cool at Maskat, outside the Gulf limits, for the Monsoon had "broken." The gracious meisture and coolness which the Monsoon brings across the sea to India does not actually reach these deserts; but it affects the whole Indian ocean generally, so that every coastline bathed by its waters rejoices therein. The five days that followed at Maskat, while we waited for the mail, were pleasant enough. There was a good deal of back surveywork to be plotted and reports to be written, and the busy days on board the ship were usually ended by cheerful sundownings at the Residency, with tennis and tea. The Residency was a house, however, to be approached with some circumspection, in spite of the hospitality of its inhabitants. It is built around the

was a lady whose kindness of heart extended itself far past the plane of humanity, and reached down, even, to our distant and nasty little relatives, the Apes. She kept, in the courtyard of the Resideney, a collection of the more highly-coloured of these creatures. No Thames barge, brilliant in red, blue, and yellow, can display more startlingly effective bows, or a more originally conceived stern decoration than could these Simian guardians of the stairs; and no bargee ever had such a command of the language of execration as they. They gnashed their teeth, yearningly, at the unfortunate visitor; they leapt and danced at the full extent of their straining waist-chains, clucking and gibbering at him, or hideously shrieking battle, murder, and sudden death; they seized the hand-railmercifully a stout one, and they could only just reach it— and shook it in impotent fury. In brief, they put the wind up you. By closely hugging the wall on the the starboard hand, and not hauling to the wind again, until well past these dangers, it was, however, just possible to circumnavigate them; and the delightful wel