Skimming Swiftly Through The Bright
Blue Waters, We Neared The White City, Not Sorry To Have Successfully
Accomplished The Voyage So Far, Yet Aware That The Hardest Part Of The
Journey To India Was Yet To Come.
At a distance, and seen from the harbour, Bushire is not unlike Cadiz.
Its Moorish buildings, the whiteness of its houses and blueness of
the sea, give it, on a fine day, a picturesque and taking appearance,
speedily dissipated, how ever, on closer acquaintance; for Bushire is
indescribably filthy.
The streets are mere alleys seven or eight feet
broad, knee-deep in dust or mud, and as irregular and puzzling to a
stranger as the maze at Hampton Court.
The Persian port is cool and pleasant enough in winter-time, but in
summer the stench from open drains and cesspools becomes unbearable,
and Europeans (of whom there are thirty or forty) remove _en masse_ to
Sabsabad, a country place eight or ten miles off. The natives, in
the mean time, live as best they can, and epidemics of cholera and
diphtheria are of yearly occurrence. The water of Bushire producing
guinea-worms (an animal that, unless rolled out of the skin with great
care, breaks, rots, and forms a festering sore), supplies of it are
brought in barrels from Bussorah or Mahommerah; but this is not within
reach of the poorer class. Nearly every third person met in the street
suffers from ophthalmia in some shape or other - the effect of the dust
and glare, for there is no shade in or about the city.
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