Marco’s description of the “Plain of Formosa” does not apply, now at least, to the whole plain, for towards Bander Abbasi it is barren.  But to the eastward, about Minao, and therefore about Old Hormuz, it has not fallen off.  Colonel Pelly writes:  “The district of Minao is still for those regions singularly fertile.  Pomegranates, oranges, pistachio-nuts, and various other fruits grow in profusion.  The source of its fertility is of course the river, and you can walk for miles among lanes and cultivated ground, partially sheltered from the sun.”  And Lieutenant Kempthorne, in his notes on that coast, says of the same tract:  “It is termed by the natives the Paradise of Persia.  It is certainly most beautifully fertile, and abounds in orange-groves, and orchards containing apples, pears, peaches, and apricots; with vineyards producing a delicious grape, from which was at one time made a wine called amber-rosolli”—­a name not easy to explain. ’Ambar-i-Rasul, “The Prophet’s Bouquet!” would be too bold a name even for Persia, though names more sacred are so profaned at Naples and on the Moselle.  Sir H. Rawlinson suggests ’Ambar-’asali, “Honey Bouquet,” as possible.

When Nearchus beached his fleet on the shore of Harmozeia at the mouth of the Anamis (the River of Minao), Arrian tells us he found the country a kindly one, and very fruitful in every way except that there were no olives.  The weary mariners landed and enjoyed this pleasant rest from their toils. (Indica, 33; J.  R. G. S. V. 274.)

[Illustration:  MARCO POLO’S ITINERARIES No.  II.  Kerman to Hormuz (Bk I. Ch. 19)]

The name Formosa is probably only Rusticiano’s misunderstanding of Harmuza, aided, perhaps, by Polo’s picture of the beauty of the plain.  We have the same change in the old Mafomet for Mahomet, and the converse one in the Spanish hermosa for formosa.  Teixeira’s Chronicle says that the city of Hormuz was founded by Xa Mahamed Dranku, i.e.  Shah Mahomed Dirhem-Ko, in “a plain of the same name.”

The statement in Ramusio that Hormuz stood upon an island, is, I doubt not, an interpolation by himself or some earlier transcriber.

When the ships of Nearchus launched again from the mouth of the Anamis, their first day’s run carried them past a certain desert and bushy island to another which was large and inhabited.  The desert isle was called Organa; the large one by which they anchored Oaracta. (Indica, 37.) Neither name is quite lost; the latter greater island is Kishm or Brakht; the former Jerun,[2] perhaps in old Persian Gerun or Geran, now again desert though no longer bushy, after having been for three centuries the site of a city which became a poetic type of wealth and splendour.  An Eastern saying ran, “Were the world a ring, Hormuz would be the jewel in it.”