The eastern hemisphere continues to have a certain venerable air with old men from a belief that the star of knowledge first enlightened its horizon: children delight in it from its containing the enchanting tales of the "Thousand and one Nights;" ladies admire its flowered muslins, rich shawls, pure pearls, and brilliant diamonds; merchants view it as a source of commercial wealth; the naturalist, the botanist, and the geologist, search its plains, its forests, and its mountains, for unicorns, spikenard, splendid specimens of zeolite, and grand basaltic formations; the English soldier looks to its fields for a harvest of reputation; while pious missionaries sally forth with more than military zeal, to reclaim the millions of the East from their errors, and direct them in the path of life. Almost all these, however different their objects, concur in one sentiment, that the rulers of the East are despots, and their subjects slaves; that the former are cruel, the latter degraded and miserable, and both equally ignorant. I had seen the father of the present Imâm of Muscat when I accompanied a former mission to Persia; we had been introduced to him on board the Ganjava, his flag ship, of a thousand tons burthen, and carrying forty guns. We found him, though surrounded with some state, very simply attired; he had a shawl rolled round his head as a turban, and the Arab cloak, which hung over his plain robes, was of white broadcloth, no way ornamented; he wore no jewels, and had no arms, not even a dagger, about his person; his manner was plain and manly, and marked his active enterprising character. The eyes of his crew (Arabs, Nubians, and Abyssinians), who were upon or near the quarter-deck, though they wandered now and then among his visitors, were usually fixed on their prince; but their countenance indicated affection, not fear; and I could not but observe that he never looked at or spoke to any of them but with kindness.