﻿104 REMARKS ON THE ISLAND 



be very glad to receive him into my service in India. 

 Mr. Roberts, the master of the ship, had passed the 

 day with Sayyad Ahmed, and had learned from him 

 a few curious circumstances concerning the govern- 

 ment of Hhrznan ; which he found to be a monarchy 

 limited by aristocracy. The king, he was told, had 

 no power of making war by his own authority ; but, 

 if the assembly of nobles, who were from time to 

 time convened by him, resolved on a war with any of 

 the neighbouring islands, they defrayed the charges 

 of it by voluntary contributions, in return for which 

 they claimed as their own all the booty and captives 

 that might be taken. The hope of gain or the want 

 of slaves is usually the real motives for such enter- 

 prizes, and ostensible pretexts are ea-.ly found. At that 

 very time he understood they medicated a war, be- 

 cause they wanted hands for the following harvest. 

 Their fleet consisted of sixteen or seventeen small ves- 

 sels, which they manned with about two thousand five 

 hundred islanders armed with muskets and cutlasses, 

 Or with bows and arrows. IS ear two years had elaps- 

 ed before they had possessed themselves of two towns 

 in Mayata, which they still kept and garrisoned. The 

 ordinary expences of the government were defrayed 

 by a tax from two hundred villages; but the three 

 principal towns were exempt from all taxes, except 

 that they paid annually to the chief Mufti a fortieth 

 part of the value of all their moveable property ; and 

 from that payment neither the king nor the nobles 

 claimed an exemption. The kingly authority, by the 

 principles of their consitution, was considered elective, 

 though the line of succession had not been altered since 

 the first election of a sultan. He was informed that a 

 wandering Arab, who had settled in the island, 

 had, by his intrepidity in several wars, acquired the 

 rank of a chieftain, and afterwards of a king with 

 limited powers ; and that he was the grandfather 

 of Shaikh Ahmed. 1 had been assured that Queen 



