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.
The latter is built at the end of a peninsula ten miles in length and three in breadth, the portion furthest away from the town being swampy and overflowed by the sea.

Most of the houses are of soft crumbling stone full of shells; some, of brick and plastered mud; but all are whitewashed, which gives the place the spurious look of cleanliness to which I have referred.

The inhabitants of this "whited sepulchre" number from 25,000 to 30,000.

There is a considerable trade in tobacco, attar of roses, shawls, cotton wool, etc.; but vessels drawing over ten feet cannot approach the town nearer than a distance of three miles--a great drawback in rough or squally weather.
Were it five thousand miles away, Bushire could scarcely be less like Persia than it is.

It has but one characteristic in common with other cities--its ruins.