March, 1588; our ship being
the richest in merchant goods that ever was known to arrive in this
realm.
SECTION V.
Of the Monsoons, or Periodical Winds, with which Ships depart from
Place to Place in India. By William Barret.[5]
It is to be noted, that the city of Goa is the principal place of all
the oriental India, and that the winter begins there on the 15th of May,
with very great rain, and so continues till the 1st of August; during
which time no ship can pass the bar of Goa, as, by these continual
rains, all the sands join together hear a mountain called Oghane, and
run into the shoals of the bar and port of Goa, having no other issue,
and remain there, so that the port is shut up till the 1st of August;
but it opens again on the 10th of August, as the rains are then ceased,
and the sea thus scours away the sand.
[Footnote 5: Hakluyt, II. 413.
It appears, from the journal of John Eldred, in the preceding section,
that William Barret was English consul at Aleppo, and died in 1584.
In the immediately preceding article in Hakluyt, vol. II. p. 406, et
seq., is a curious account of the money weights and measures of Bagdat,
Basora, Ormus, Goa, Cochin, and Malacca, which we wished to have
inserted, but found no sufficient data by which to institute a
comparison with the money weights and measures of England, without which
they would have been entirely useless.
