Now Touching The Trade And Navigation Of This Port
With Many Sorts Of People, And With Strange And Remote Countries, I Know
Not What City Can Compare With It Except Lisbon:
As this city trades
with all India, both on this side and beyond the Ganges; with Cambaya,
Tanacerim, Pegu, Malacca; and within the Straits with Jiddah,
Cairo, and Alexandria.
From all Ethiopia and Abyssinia it procures
great quantities of gold and ivory. As to the strength and situation of
this city enough can hardly be said; since to come to it, the
inconveniences, difficulties, and dangers are so great, that it seems
almost impossible: as for fifteen leagues about, the shoals, flats,
islands, channels, rocks, banks, and sands, and surges of the sea, are
so many and intricate that they put the sailors in great fear and almost
in despair. The situation of the city is this: In the middle of a great
nook or bay, is a perfectly flat island almost level with the sea and
exactly round, being about a quarter, of a league in circuit, upon which
the city of Swakem is built; not one foot of ground on the whole
island but is replenished with houses and inhabitants, so that the whole
island, is a city. On two sides this insular city comes within a
bow-shot of the main land, that is on the E.S.E. and S.W. sides, but all
the rest is farther from the land. The road, haven, or bay surrounds the
city on every side to the distance of a cross-bow shot, in all of which
space, ships may anchor in six or seven fathoms on a mud bottom.
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