Abbott says further, that Kirman was not of much commercial importance, being so far removed from the direct lines of communication between other chief places, and being adjacent to vast and unproductive regions. It is by no means clear that Schiltberger was ever at Kirman; but if his account of that town and of the islands in the Persian Gulf is given from personal observation, which is very doubtful, it is possible that he followed the same route as traced by Colonel Yule in Marco Polo’s _Itineraries_, No. ii.—ED. (17.) “Keschon”, “Hognus”, “Kaff”.—Kishm, Hormuz, and Kais, are three islands in the Persian Gulf, which, however, Schiltberger does not particularise as such. Kishm, the largest of the three, is called by the Persians, Draz Jazyra—Long Island—the more familiar name being Harkh. An excellent harbour is formed on the south side by the island of Angar. Kishm was occupied in 1622 by an English force, which destroyed a fort the Portuguese had erected the previous year, one of the few Englishmen killed upon the occasion being William Baffin who in 1616 sailed round Baffin’s Bay. Colonel Yule (Marco Polo, i, 113) has clearly established the site of ancient Hormuz on the main land, a city that was abandoned for the island of Zarun, afterwards Hormuz, in 1315 (Ouseley, _Travels_, etc., i, 157), as a protection, says Aboulfeda, from the repeated incursions of the Tatars. Already, in the days of Ibn Batouta, who mentions both Old and New Hormuz (_Lee edition_, 63), was Harauna, the new city and residence of the king, a large and beautiful place; and Friar Oderic, his contemporary, remarks on the efficient fortifications of Ormes, and its great store of merchandise and treasure; so that its reputation as a great commercial depôt was well established in Schiltberger’s time. Of the many travellers who have described the island, Varthema, 1503-1508 (_Hakluyt Soc. Publ._, 94), reported, that as many as three hundred vessels belonging to different countries were sometimes assembled at the noble city of Ormus, which was extremely beautiful; and some years later, 1563, Cesare Federici (Hakluyt _Voyages_, ii, 342) noticed a great trade there in all sorts of spice, drugs, silk, cloth of silk, brocardo, and other merchandise. Hormuz, like Kishm, was also recovered from the Portuguese by the English for Shah Abbas in 1623, until which period it was a stately and rich place, of which the inhabitants made the boast that “if the world were a ring, Ormus must be considered as the diamond”. The city has now completely disappeared, and over the space of about one square mile of its site may be seen, here and there, the foundations of houses, those near the sea being the most visible. In the neighbourhood are several hundred reservoirs, and many Mussulman tombs, some of which are enclosed within domed buildings that had some pretensions to architecture (_Persian Gulf Pilot_, 1870, 148).