of Bom Jesus with its magnificent shrine of St. Francis Xavier would not have disgraced a European capital, and it was only one of many superb religious structures of which the city could boast, for the Inquisition, then in the plenitude of its awful power, cast an unholy lustre over the settlement. Men in whose veins the most aristocratic blood of Portugal ran gave to the local society a distinction uncommon in an Eastern settlement. On all hands were evidences of refinement and luxury, and of the splendours of a powerful seat of government. Even to-day, when Goa is little more than a heap of mouldering ruins, it is possible to realize in the survivals of the past something of the dignified life which was once lived in this the earliest scene of European colonization in India. And Goa, of course, was only one of several important possessions which Portugal then owned in this region. In Southern India were Cochin and Cannanore and farther South was the beautiful island of Ceylon which the Portuguese dominated from strongly fortified bases at Colombo, Jaffnapatam and elsewhere. Away northward in the Persian gulf were Ormuz and Gombroon, the latter the modern Bunder Abbas, both centres which in their day had been the seats of a great trade. It is with the two last-named settlements that the narrative has now to deal.
At a very early period after their first visit to Surat, the English had turned their attention to the Persian Gulf trade. At that time Europe, owing to the glamour of old associations, entertained an exaggerated idea of the possibilities of the route through the Gulf as a channel for the prosecution of Eastern trade. Its historic past was certainly a great one. From a very remote era it had been used as one of the main ocean highways for the transit of
