The Persian Gulf and Abusheher.

When we had fairly entered the Persian Gulf I found myself on classic ground, where all the wonderful adventures of Sinbad the sailor were, what a genuine Yankee would call located. I sent for an Arabian servant called KhudÂdÂd, and asked him who were the inhabitants of the barren shore of Arabia that we saw. He answered, with apparent alarm—"They are of the sect of WahÂbees, and are called Jouassimee; but God preserve us from them, for they are monsters. Their occupation is piracy, and their delight murder; and to make it worse, they give you the most pious reasons for every villainy they commit. They abide by the letter of the sacred volume, rejecting all commentaries and traditions. If you are their captive, and offer all you possess to save your life, they say 'No! it is written in the Koran that it is unlawful to plunder the living, but we are not prohibited in that sacred work from stripping the dead;' so saying, they knock you on the head. But then," continued KhudÂdÂd, "that is not so much their fault, for they are descended from a Houl, or monster, and they act according to their nature."

I begged he would inform me about their descent. He seemed surprised at my ignorance, and said it was a story that he thought was known to every one in the world, but proceeded to comply with my request.

"An Arab fisherman," said he, "who lived in a village on the Persian Gulf, not far from Gombroon, being one day busy at his usual occupation, found his net so heavy that he could hardly drag it on shore. Exulting in his good fortune, he exerted all his strength: but judge of his astonishment, when, instead of a shoal of fish, he saw in his net an animal of the shape of a man, but covered with hair. He approached it with caution; but finding it harmless, carried it to his house, where it soon became a favourite; for, though it could speak no language, and utter no sound except 'houl, houl,' (from whence it took its name,) it was extremely docile and intelligent; and the fisherman, who possessed some property, employed it to guard his flocks.

"It happened one day that a hundred Persian horsemen, clothed in complete armour, came from the interior, and began to drive away the sheep. The Houl, who was alone, and had no arms but a club, made signs for them to desist; but they only scoffed at his unnatural appearance, till he slew one or two who approached too near him. They now attacked him in a body; but his courage and strength were surpassed by his activity, and while all fell who came within his reach, he eluded every blow of his enemies; and they fled, after losing half their numbers.

"The fisherman and his neighbours, when they heard of the battle, hastened to the aid of the faithful Houl, whom they found in possession of the horses, clothes, and arms of the vanquished Persians. An Arab of the village, struck with his valour, and casting an eye of cupidity at the wealth he had acquired, offered him the hand of his daughter, who was very beautiful, and she, preferring good qualities to outward appearance, showed no reluctance to become the bride of this kind and gallant monster. Their marriage was celebrated with more pomp than was ever before known in the village; and the Houl, who was dressed in one of the richest suits of the Persians he had slain, and mounted on one of their finest horses, looked surprisingly well. He was quite beside himself with joy, playing such antics, and exhibiting such good humour, strength, and agility, that his bride, who had at first been pitied, became the envy of every fisherman's daughter. She would have been more so, could they have foreseen the fame to which she was destined. She had four sons, from whom are descended the four tribes of Ben Jouassim, Ben Ahmed, Ben Nasir, and Ben Saboohil, who are to this day known by the general name of Ben Houl, or the children of Houl. They are all fishermen, boatmen, and pirates, and live chiefly at sea, inheriting, it is believed, the amphibious nature of their common ancestor."

After this tale was concluded, I asked KhudÂdÂd what kind of men inhabited those high mountains which we saw rising on the Persian shores of the gulf. Delighted at this second opportunity of showing his knowledge, he replied, "They also are robbers, but they are not so bad as the Jouassimee. They refer their first settlement in these mountains to the devil; but then they are the children of men, and their nature is not diabolical, though their deeds are sometimes very like it."

On questioning KhudÂdÂd further, I found he had the popular story taken from Firdousee,[6] and that he kept pretty near to his text; but I shall give it in his own words. "You have heard of ZohÂk, prince of Arabia?" I said I had. "Well then," he continued, "you know he was a very wicked man. He conquered Jemsheed, king of Persia, who was in those days deemed the most glorious monarch on earth. After this great success ZohÂk was tempted by the devil, who allured him, under the shape of a venerable old man, to kill his father, that he might become king of Arabia as well as Persia. In those days men lived on vegetable diet; but the devil, anxious to destroy as many of the human race as he could, tempted ZohÂk with some new roasted eggs, and perceiving him to relish his food, proposed to cook him a dish of partridges and quails, with the flavour of which the Prince was so delighted that he bade his friend ask any favour he liked. The wily old man said all he wished was to kiss the shoulders of his beloved monarch. They were bared for that purpose; but no sooner had the infernal lips touched them than out sprang from each a ravenous serpent, and at the same time the venerable old man changed to his natural shape, and disappeared in a thunder-storm, exclaiming that human brains alone would satisfy the monsters he had created, and that their death would be followed by that of ZohÂk.

"It fell out as the devil foretold: the serpents refused all other food, and, for a period, two victims were daily slain to satisfy them. Those charged with the preparation of this horrid repast, seeing the devil's design, determined on frustrating it; and while they paraded before ZohÂk and his serpents the persons who were doomed to death, they substituted the brains of sheep, and sent their supposed human victims to the mountains of Kerman and Lauristan, where they increased, and became a great people, and their descendants still inhabit these hills. There can be no doubt," said KhudÂdÂd, gravely, "of the truth of what I have told you; for it is all written in a book, and a fine poem made upon it, which is called the ShÂh-nÂmeh, or Book of Kings."

Having acquired this correct information about the shores of the gulf, I landed at Abusheher,[7] a Persian sea-port, celebrated as the mart of chintzes and long-ells, of dates and asafoetida. We were met on the beach by the whole population of the town. What appeared to excite most admiration was the light company of His Majesty's 84th Regiment, whose uniform appearance caused no slight wonder. Struck with their similarity of look, one man exclaimed, "These fellows must all have had the same father and mother!" "That cannot be," said another, "for they must all have been born on the same day." "They are proper devils, I'll warrant them," said an old woman, who had been looking at them very attentively. They had now received the order to march; and the regularity with which their feet moved was a new subject of surprise. An old merchant, called Hajee Ismael, whose life had been spent amongst his accounts, and who delighted in everything that was regular, stood at a corner as they passed in files, and kept saying, as he noted them with his fingers, "correct,[8] correct, correct." Take it all in all, our landing seemed to give great pleasure to the men, women, and children of the port of Abusheher.

We had not been on shore a week before two events occurred, one of which showed what the Persians thought of us, and the other taught us what we should think of them.

Before the year 1800 no political mission from an European nation had visited the court of Persia for a century; but the English, though only known in that kingdom as merchants, had fame as soldiers, from the report of their deeds in India. An officer of one of the frigates, who had gone ashore to visit the Envoy, when mounted on a spirited horse, afforded no small entertainment to the Persians by his bad horsemanship. The next day the man who supplied the ship with vegetables, and who spoke a little English, met him on board, and said, "Don't be ashamed, sir, nobody knows you: bad rider! I tell them, you, like all English, ride well, but that time they see you, very drunk!" We were much amused at this conception of our national character. The Persian thought it would have been a reproach for a man of a warlike nation not to ride well, but none for an European to get drunk.

The other occurrence was still more characteristic. The Envoy or Elchee,[9] as the Persians called him, had, among other plans for doing good, one for the introduction of potatoes. Among those who listened to him, and applauded his disinterested intentions to benefit Persia, was a fat, smooth-faced young merchant, who obtained a promise of a considerable quantity of potatoes for seed, having (according to his own report) rented a large piece of ground, that he might be an humble instrument in the hands of the British Representative for doing good. The latter, pleased with his zeal, honoured this excellent man with such particular attention, that, conceiving himself a prime favourite, he ventured one day to suggest that "As the season was too far advanced for the potatoe-garden that year, it would not be unworthy of the Elchee's wonted liberality to commute his intended present for a pair of pistols, or a piece of British broadcloth." This premature disclosure of the real object of this professed improver of the soil produced no little ridicule, in which his countrymen, who were jealous of the favour he had enjoyed, joined most heartily. He was known till the day of his death, which happened three years ago, by the name of Potatoes. It is satisfactory to add, that the plan for introducing this valuable root did not fail: they were found to flourish at Abusheher, where they are called "Malcolm's[10] plum," after the Elchee, who looks to the accident which gave his name to a useful vegetable as one of his best chances of enduring fame.

The English factory, which had long been at Gombroon, had been removed some years before to Abusheher. All the old servants had accompanied it, and one, of the name of Suffer, had recently died, of whom I was delighted to hear, from the best authority, an anecdote, which did credit to the kindness of our countrymen, while it showed that even in this soil, good usage will generate strong and lasting attachment. When poor Suffer, who had been fifty years a servant in the factory, was on his death-bed, the English doctor ordered him a glass of wine. He at first refused it, saying, "I cannot take it; it is forbidden in the Koran." But after a few moments he begged the doctor to give it him, saying, as he raised himself in his bed, "Give me the wine; for it is written in the same volume, that all you unbelievers will be excluded from Paradise; and the experience of fifty years teaches me to prefer your society in the other world, to any place unto which I can be advanced with my own countrymen." He died a few hours after this sally, which I was glad to observe proved of value to his son, a rough-looking lad named Derveish, who was introduced by the Resident to the Envoy, at the time the former told the story of the father's attachment. Derveish was taken into service, and I have watched his gradual advancement till he has become the proprietor of a large boat, which is the ne plus ultra of the ambition of an Abusheheree.

The natives of this place are almost all of Arab race, and fond of the sea; a propensity the more remarkable, as it is in such strong contrast with the disposition of the Persians, of whom all classes have an unconquerable antipathy to that element. But this is not the only characteristic distinction between these classes of men, who appear to agree in nothing but in dwelling in the same town. The Persians, who have been tempted by the hope of gain to exchange the fine climate of the elevated plains of the interior, for the sea-ports on the edge of the sultry desert, which forms the shores of the gulf, retain all the smooth pliant manners of their country; and they look with disgust on what they deem the rude barbarous habits of the Arabians, who are the great body of the inhabitants of this track, and who can scarcely be distinguished, either in look or sentiment, from their kindred on the opposite shore.

A remarkable instance of the difference of character, between the lower orders of these two classes, occurred one morning, when the Envoy was preparing a match, to be run by a beautiful English greyhound called Venus, and a strong Arabian dog named KessÂb, or the Butcher. He was giving directions to his master of the chase, Hyder, and expressing his sanguine hopes of Venus's success: Mahomed Beg, a tall well-dressed Persian groom, assented to all his anticipations, saying, "What pretensions can that Arab dog have to run with the beautiful greyhound of the Elchee?"

Others joined in the same language, and the opinion appeared general, when an Arab, called Gherreeba,[11] whose pay was only four piastres[12] a month, whose chequered turban and cloth round his middle were not worth one, and whose occupation was sitting all day exposed to the sun, watering some grass screens that were placed against the door of the house to exclude the heat—darted up, and, with an eye of fire and the most marked energy, exclaimed, "By the all-powerful God, the Arab dog will triumph."[13]

Gherreeba was for the moment the representative of the feelings of his country. The parasites around stood watching the Elchee, and were not a little mortified when they heard him applaud the honest warmth and manly independence of the poor Arab, who was invited to witness the trial. It ended, like most similar trials, in each party being convinced that their own favourite was, or ought to have been, the winner. The dogs ran as usual beautifully: Venus was by far the fleetest; but the chase, which was after a half-grown antelope, proved long, and the strength of the Butcher prevailed towards the close. It is however, justice to the deer species, while we are praising the canine, to add, that the antelope beat them both.