Note 89 — THE VOYAGE OF NEARKHOS.

As stated in Note 64, Organa is now Ormuz, and Oarakta, Kishm. Ormuz, once so renowned for its wealth and commerce, that it was said of it by its Portuguese occupants, that if the world were a golden ring, Ormuz would be the diamond signet, is now in utter decay. “I have seen,” says Palgrave (II. 319), “the abasement of Tyre, the decline of Surat, the degradation of Goa: but in none of those fallen seaports is aught resembling the utter desolation of Ormuz.” A recent traveller in Persia (Binning) thus describes the coast: “It presents no view but sterile, barren, and desolate chains of rocks and hills: and the general aspect of the Gulf is dismal and forbidding. Moore’s charming allusions to Oman’s sea, with its ‘banks of pearl and palmy isles’ are unfortunately quite visionary; for uglier and more unpicturesque scenery 1 never beheld.”—Two Years’ Travel in Persia, I. pp. 136, 137.