catamaran; they were provided with cotton sails, and the owners were, apparently, better fed than those about the Red sea, and wore most venerable long beards, quite outstripping any of the goat family. The waters were teeming with food--fish were in greater abundance, if it be possible, than about Mocha. In the morning, an interchange of salutes took place. The harbour, or rather cove of Muscat, is extremely limited in its dimensions; it does not exceed three fourths of a mile in depth, from its entrance at the small islet, called the Fishers’ Rock, lying off the northern part of the Muscat island, and its width, between the fort on the island, and another fort on the main, on the western shore, is scarcely one half its depth. It is open to the north, and during the prevalence of northerly and westerly gales, in the winter, a heavy sea is thrown in. The cove is bounded by very precipitous black rocks, running up to the height of three or four hundred feet, being much jagged or serrated; and on the higher parts are perched small circular towers, which are said to have been placed there by the Portuguese, in the “olden-time,” when they held possession of the place. They are, apparently, inaccessible to every thing, but hawks, gulls, and sea-swallows, which abound in its caverns and fissures. No place (excepting always a plain of sand) presents a more forbidding aspect than this; not a green thing is to be seen, whether tree, shrub, or plant, from the roadstead. The town and its two castles, which crown the tops of very high rocks, to the east and to the north, and which are evidently intended as much to overawe and defend the town, as the harbour, together with the two forts and its towers, are the only objects (if I may except a few white stone houses) which at all relieve the dreary prospect. Unless the wind blows from the northward, or a strong breeze from the southward and eastward, through the narrow gap, which separates Muscat island from the main land, the heat is excessive, for there is not the slightest degree of elasticity in the air; and the heated rocks are never cooled during three fourths of the year, and the sun seems to dart forth its rays with great malignity. During our stay, the night wind occasionally blew from the land, and then the heat was almost insupportable; every one complained of its suffocating effects, the perspiration poured from the body like rain, and the strength was at once prostrate. The town lies at the bottom of the cove, at the only level spot to be seen, between very high ridges of rocks in the southwestern quarter. It is walled, excepting the part fronting the harbour, having round towers at the principal angles. With the exception of the sultan’s palace, whose walls are bathed on the harbour side by “Oman’s green waters,” and on another side by the bazar, a narrow, dark covered street, and a few other decent looking houses, miserably built of stone, and coated