Travels in India (Tavernier) 4: Route from Ispahan to Agra by (way of) Gombroon, where particular mention is made of the navigation from Hormuz to Surat.

4

I shall follow in this account of my Indian travels the same order as I have observed in that of my Persian travels, and I shall commence with the description of the routes by which one can go from Ispahan to Delhi and Jahanabad, where the Great Mogul at present resides.
Although India presents a frontier towards Persia of more than 400 leagues, extending from the ocean up to that long chain of mountains which traverses the centre of Asia from west to east, and has been known to antiquity under the name of Mount Taurus or Mount Caucasus, there are, notwithstanding, not so many ways for passing from Persia into India as there are for passing from Turkey into Persia, because between Persia and India there are only sands and vast deserts where one finds no water at all. Thus, in order to go from Ispahan to Agra there are but two routes to select from — one partly by land and partly by sea, by taking ship at Hormuz ; and the other altogether by land, passing through Candahar. The first of these routes has been fully described up to Hormuz towards the end of the last book of my travels in Persia, and I have now to speak of the navigation from Hormuz to Surat.
Navigation in the Indian seas is not carried on at all seasons, as it is in our European seas, and it is necessary to take the proper season, outside the limits of which no one ventures to put to sea. The months of November, December, January, February, and March, are the only months in the year in which one embarks at Hormuz for Surat, and at Surat for Hormuz : with this difference, however, that one rarely leaves Surat later than the end of February, but for leaving Hormuz one may wait till the end of March, and even till the 15th of April, because then the western wind which brings the rains to India begins to blow. During the first four months a wind from the north-east prevails with which one may sail from Surat to Hormuz in fifteen or twenty days; afterwards, veering by degrees to the north, it serves equally the vessels which go to Surat and those which are coming from it, and during this period the merchants generally reckon on spending thirty or thirty-five days at sea; but when you wish to go from Hormuz to Surat in fourteen or fifteen days, you must embark in the month of March or at the beginning of April, because then you have the western wind astern all the way.
Vessels leaving Hormuz steer for Muscat, on the coast of Arabia, in order not to approach too near to that of Persia, and to give it a wide berth. Those which are coming from Surat do the same, in order to find the entrance to the gulf, but neither the one nor the other ever touch at Muscat, because custom dues have to be paid to the Arabian Prince who took this place from the Portuguese.
Muscat is a town on the sea-coast, opposite to three rocks, which render the approach to it very difficult, and it lies at the foot of a mountain upon which the Portuguese had three or four forts. It may be remarked that Muscat, Hormuz, and BASSORA are the three places in the East where the heat is most unbearable. Formerly the English and Dutch monopolised this navigation; but for some years past the