On each occasion we had to reach it by way of India, for like all the rest of the Persian Gulf Maskat is really an outlying portion of our Indian Empire. By just crossing a range of mountains in Persia you cross the metaphorical watershed between our India and Foreign Offices. At Shiraz you hesitate between India and England. You ask the question, 'Shall I send my letters _via_ Bombay, or _via_ Russia?' You hasten to get rid of your rupees, for this is the last place where their merit is recognised. North of Shiraz you are in a distinctly foreign country. Our officials hail from the Foreign Office and belong to the legation of Teheran. You are no longer under British protection, you are in the dominions of the Shah. But so long as you are on the shores of the Gulf you are, so to speak, in India. The officials receive their pay in degenerate rupees instead of pounds sterling, they live in 'bungalows,' they talk of 'tiffin,' and eat curry at every meal. We keep a British ship of war in the Gulf. We feel that it is a matter of the first importance that those countries should remain under our protection, and that the Turks should not build forts at Fao and otherwise interfere with our trade in the Karoun, and that no other power should have a foothold thereon. The last generation talked much about a Euphrates Valley Railway, with its terminus at Koweit; we now hear a great deal about the opening up of the Karoun, but it is the lordship of the Gulf which is the chief matter of importance just at present both for India and for ourselves. In this district Maskat is the most important point; the kingdom of Oman, of which it is nominally the capital, commands the entrance to the Gulf. In the ninth century of the Christian era ships trading from Sherif to China took in water at Maskat from the wells which still supply the town. Between Aden and the Persian Gulf it is the only harbour where ships of any size can find anchorage, and it may, in fact, be said to play much the same part with respect to the Persian Gulf that Aden does to the Red Sea. In many other ways the places are strikingly similar. They are both constructed on arid, volcanic rocks, which produce the smallest amount of verdure and reflect the greatest amount of heat; water in both of them is the scarcest of commodities. Of all places in the world Maskat has the reputation of being the hottest, facing, as it does, the Indian Ocean, and protected from every cooling breeze by rugged volcanic hills, without a blade of cultivation upon them, and which reflect and intensify the scorching rays of the burning sun. Aden is said to have but a piece of brown paper between it and the infernal fires. Maskat would seem to want even this meagre protection, and 'gives,' as a Persian poet has expressed it, 'to the panting sinner a lively anticipation of his future destiny.'