A SECRET SURVEY. BY REAR-ADMIRAL BOYLE SOMERVILLE, C.M.G. II. BUSHIRE is a town situated The land around the harbour at about eighty miles south- is, for twenty miles, a low flat ward from the head of the plain. At its confines, the Gulf, whose original raison great rampart of mountains d'être was, no doubt, its har- suddenly springs up, on whose bour. This reason still exists, top is the real Persia, 3000 but not for modern vessels, as feet and more above the sea, it is far too shallow for any- stretching all the way to the thing except dhows. Regarded Caspian. The hot little town with the tourist's eye, it has of Bushire, tightly squeezed all the appearance of a large within its white wall at the and excellent bay of tranquil tip of a point of land which water; but when the navigator projects into the bay, is surproduces a chart, it is seen rounded on three sides by from the soundings that a the water. All the foreign consteamer of ordinary draught sulates, and even the house of would have to anchor between the Persian Governor, are left three and four miles from the panting outside the wall, on town, and quite outside the the scorching plain. In 1856 protecting shores of the bay we had a little war with Persia, itself. The place was a fishing during which Bushire surrenvillage for 1200 happy unre- dered to our forces, and regarded years, until 1750, when mained in our occupation for it was chosen by the Shah to some months. be the Portsmouth of Persia. have retained not only a conThis pre-eminence persists; and sulate at the town, but also a when we arrived there in the Political Resident, whose ResiSphinx we found the entire dency is at Rishire, six miles Persian Navy anchored in its away. principal home port. This was H.I.P.M.S. Persepolis, a gunboat of the most ex. treme antiquity. We gazed on her with the respect due to age and infirmity, and then exchanged with her commanding officer the proper pompous naval visits, in the best modern style, the usual compliments" being paid on either side, in superfine Dartmouth French and its Teheran equivalent. Since then, we The drive there, to report our proceedings to date, was an interesting experience. It was undertaken in a vehicle whose only living counterpart, probably, is to be found in Napoleon's carriage at Madame Tussaud's Exhibition. The ropes with which, like St Paul's ship, it was bound together, front to rear, fortunately held during the drive. As we hopped over the Alpine corrugations of the hard-baked grateful for anything as for the night spent under that great roof as wide as it was hospitable. A couple of days later we left, to resume my running survey of the Persian coast. For thirty miles to the southward of Bushire is a wide and featureless plain, whose every indentation and khor was well known, and quite unnecessary to re-survey. From that point onward, the flat land bordering the sea is but a narrow strip-a mere footstep between the water and the great ranges of barren 5000-feet mountains, which stand behind it as a wall for 300 miles to the southward. Somewhere along this oramped seaboard there might track, Kemp and I had grave fears of being left behind on it, in the stuffy after-part of the chariot, when, as seemed inevitable, the narrow curving isthmus which connected us with the front wheels, coachman's box, and horses, should at length yield to force majeure. We drove thus, in deep trepidation, past the British Consulate, the Turkish, and the Russian; then past the French and Datoh Consulates, amioably conjoined; past the Imamzada Mosque, conspicuous on its little hill, and came at last, with the two parts of our coach still wonderfully undivorced, to the British Residency. The country on each side of the road was already, by the end of May, a brown desert. The crops, green six weeks earlier, were all harvested, and nothing but very improbably-exist was now alive but a few late some unknown crack, or even trees, blossoming in feverish some bay; and as the water haste before the rapidly advanc- was deep, the coast could be ing summer should overtake approached sufficiently closely and shrivel them; casting the to investigate it comfortably flowers and leaves of to-day, and with certainty. to-morrow into its oven. To the British eye, accustomed to a cool grey heaven and a green and fruitful earth, the view of the naked ribs of the brown mountains, roasting under the furious furnace of the Persian sky, raised an unceasing pity for those condemned to live in this Earthly Hell. There seemed to be The Residency is an immense building, all pillars and roof, like a vast hay-barn. The rooms in it are merely spaces screened off amidst the pillars and made mosquito-proof. Its coolness and amplitude were absolute heaven, by contrast with the the cramped, sweatbox cabins of a ship,-even quite a large number of of a ship expressly designed such unfortunates. Everyfor hot weather, such as the where along the dismal coastSphinx. line, village succeeded village, tiny, ancient, fringed with date-palms, and surmounted, usually, by towers of strength against the enemy, whether sea-pirate or robber of the It takes a sailor really to appreciate the "blessings of the land," for the enjoyment of which he prays daily; and seldom have I been so truly mountains. Desert lay be- The date-palms, the only livtween each place of settled abode; desert mountains, of drear and monstrous outline, lay behind them; the green desert of the sea mourned in front of them, whitening as it broke over nameless rock and shoal. The most ambitious Power could not but pause before committing its fortunes and its children to the arms of this Moloch land, to wither miserably in the brazen heat of its arid wastes. Our first stopping - place, ninety miles southward from Bushire, was named Ras-alMutaf. There is here a flat point of land, with its end ourving round in a long sandy shoal, between which and the shore there is a space of moderately protected water. Here we anchored, with the double intention of making such survey as should show whether this uninviting anchorage, with its neighbouring village, could ever be sophistioated into a naval and commercial port; and also to clear up several doubts that existed as to its geographical position, as to the correctness of the charted soundings, and as to other reported details concerning it. Our intentions were frustrated. The long-pending Shamál came down on us, in a burst, out of the blazing north-west. A hurricane of flame, almost, is this terrible wind. As it strikes you, you seem to be passing the door of an open furnace: you gasp with heat and astonishment. It sweeps along the shore in a deep brown oloud of flying dust and grit. ing things that rejoice before it, bend, tossing their tough green fronds and load of ripening fruit. The sky and the land disappear in a hot murk; mankind, too, disappears into dug-outs in the ground, shaded by boughs, while it passes over. There is nothing hid from the heat thereof. Between the gusts you may still see the slow camels, sloping southward along the coast road, burdened, strung out, sterns to the wind, disdainful even of the Shamál, without haste, without rest. Surveying work becomes impossible. There is no sun or star visible by which to find latitude and longitude. No feature remains, whether of mountain summit or of coastal rock, that is not either blurred, or else quite invisible in the brown haze; and the fierce wind raises so big a sea, with white-crested waves, that boat-work and sounding are out of the question. three detestable days and nights the Shamál blew fiercely, and still we watched and waited. At last, on the fourth day, it moderated sufficiently for us to decide that the place was useless as a harbour, both from its depths and from the fact that there was no protection from the wind. For June had opened upon us when we continued the "running survey" to the southward. It is not possible to describe the method by which such a survey is made, without becoming either unintelligible or else desperately boring. the "prominent object" on the The underlying principle is a simple one-the results produced are a mere pioneering sketch; but, for all that, in practice, it is certainly the most difficult method that exists for the charting of a coast; and it needs long experience to produce good results. When one has five or six assistants, all experts, as in a regularly commissioned surveying vessel, it is, even then, work requiring the closest care and application, and is a most exhausting performance for everybody concerned. A single day of it reduces body, brains, and eyes to the merest pulp. At a distance of seventeen years, it still requires no reminder from my journal of that running survey of the Persian coast to bring back to me the aching memory of the task. Instead Instead of six skilled assistants, I had but two-the captain of the Sphinx and the navigating officer-neither of whom, to pay a polite visit to the naturally, had ever undertaken anything of the sort before. Fortunately, both of them turned out to be most helpful, not to say devoted. Without them, in fact, the work would have been impossible, and I should have collapsed, blinded by that blinding light, cooked in that terrific heat, while, day after day, as we steamed past it, the austere khaki coast unfolded itself ahead endlessly, and disappeared astern. Behind us stormed the Shamál, now settled down into its usual "seventy days" of summer life, when it blows continuously, often blotting out, in a sudden whirl of dust, local Sheikh, as "eye-wash" against our real activities. It was one of his duties to pay such visits from time to time; and the Sheikhs, no doubt, thought this was merely one of these occasions. All of these places proved to be entirely unsuitable, either for naval purposes or for commerce. Many of them were exposed to the blistering Shamál, which, though worst in the summer, blows at intervals through nine months of the year, while others were open to the S.E. gales of the winter, or to both winds. Apart from disabilities of this nature, there was everywhere the lack of fresh water; and, topping everything else, there was the climate! An efficient naval base could never be maintained by any northern nation in this Gehenna. At length we reached Kishm Island, and, with it, the end of the survey came in sight. Kishm occupies 8 strong strategio position, exactly facing the narrow entrance to the Persian Gulf. It is a mountainous island, sixty miles in length, separated from the Persian coast by a long narrow channel, named "Clarence Strait" (after good King William IV.) There are three towns on it-Kishm, on the eastern extreme, which gives the island its name; Laft, on the northern side; and Basidu, on the western end. It was to the latter spot that we directed our weary steps; and, on our arrival, had the satisfaction of seeing the Union flag run up on the flagstaff of the village-for Basidu is British! It has been so since 1809, after what cannot have been other than a hot engagement. Laft was "reduced" at the same time, but it was left at that; while Basidu became the sanatorium of the Gulf for our ships' companies, and there was also maintained there a garrison of Indian troops. The hospital and barracks, long disused, are ruins; and there is now only a small village of ninety men, who, with an old Arab, our faithful Agent, represent the colony, and are established on an area, scarcely as much as one mile square, of bare and brown, but British soil. When Kemp visited the Agent he heard from him that, not long before, the Russian Consul for the Gulf had arrived in his small sailing dhow, on a tour of the coast. On his arrival there was immediately hoisted on the flagstaff the Union flag of Britain. The Consul, a little man but a fierce, landed; and pointing to the flag, shook his fist at it, cursed it, and demanded to know why it had been hoisted, and for how many years it had been flying there. The Agent, himself an old man with a grey beard, replied that it had been flying ever since he could remember anything, but that there was a still older inhabitant who might know more. On being sent for, this ancient replied in like manner, that he could not remember any condition of affairs in Basidu other than the British supremacy and flag. The little visitor, it appears, then danced with rage (it was in January, and the temperature permitted, without great discomfort, this exhibition of the Russian ballet), and he called both of the old Arabs "liars." "Very well, then," says our Agent with high composure, "if you know better than we do, why do you ask us?" And with this firm reply a grave international crisis closed. The Consul went back to his boat, simmering but thoughtful, and resumed his inspection of the coast. Having thus "made our number" at Basidu, we left, and first steamed along the south side of Kishm Island, visiting, as we did so, the small |