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 An agreement of a far-reaching kind was, as the upshot of the negotiations, arranged between the English and the Persian commander. Amongst the conditions were: (1) that the spoils should be equally divided; (2) that the yield of the customs at Ormuz, when taken, should be shared in future as between the two nations, the English being for ever customs free; (3) that Christians captured should be at the disposal of the English; and (4) that the Persian commander should pay half the cost of the detention of the ships.

As the first diplomatic instrument concluded with Persia this agreement has special interest. It shows that British rights in the Persian Gulf are no modern bogey reared to warn off inconvenient rivals, as has sometimes been represented abroad, but have an ancestry going back three himdred years to an episode in which Englishmen rendered definite and valuable services to the reigning Shah.

Some days after the seal had been put to the document embodying the foregoing terms, the English vessels appeared off Ormuz and found the Portuguese fleet, consisting of five galleons, two small ships and a number of frigates, riding at anchor under the guns of the castle. The Portuguese were in too strong a position to be attacked with any hope of success, and they showed no disposition to come out into open water, where the conditions would be more equalized. The English commanders, therefore, decided to devote their attention to the adjoining island of Kishm, where the Portuguese had built a fort, and were conducting a not unsuccessful fight against a large body of Persian troops which had been sent against them. Blyth and Weddell were the more disposed to make this transfer of the scene of their operations as they learned that the