The most conspicuous buildings of Muscat are the two forts, the relics of the Portuguese dominion, which stand out boldly on each side of the town about 100 feet above the sea. They command not only the sea-approach, but the town itself and are only accessible by a fine stairway cut out of the natural rock. The guns that bristle from the forts are nearly all old and comparatively harmless. Several of them are of brass and bear the royal arms of Spain; one is dated 1606. In the fort to the right of the harbor, one can still see the ruins of a Portuguese chapel. When Pelly visited it in 1865 the following inscription was legible. AVE MAR. GRASA P._EA ☐s TECUM Etc.... Its translation given by him reads: “Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Don Phillip III., King of Spain, Don Juan de Acuna of his council of war and his captain-general of the artillery in the year 1605, in the eighth year of his reign in the crown of Portugal, ordered through Don Quarte Menezes, his commissioner of India, that this fortress should be built.” The Sultan has also a town residence in half decay like all the other stone-built but mud-cemented houses of the natives. The only residences well-built and durable are those of the British resident and the American consul. The former occupies the choice location, in a rock cleft, where breezes blow from two directions. The bazaar of Muscat has little to boast of; one of the chief industries is the manufacture of _Hilawi_ or Muscat candy-paste, which to the acquired taste is delicious, but to the stranger smells of rancid butter and tastes like sweet wagon-grease. The town is cut off from the plain behind by a substantially built wall which stretches from hill to hill. This wall is pierced with two gates which are always guarded and closed a couple of hours after sunset. The moat outside the wall is dry. Beyond it are houses and hundreds of mat huts principally inhabited by Beluchis and Negroes. The American mission house is also outside of the wall, in this quarter. About a third of a mile beyond are the gardens of Muscat and the wells, protected by a tower and guard. “The gardens” are always visited at sunset by the strollers for exercise, but they are hardly large enough “to supply a week’s food for 100 self-respecting locusts of normal appetite.”