Calicut Is Surrounded By Many Gardens And Orchards, Producing All The Herbs And Fruits Of This Country In Great Abundance, Having Also Many Palms And Other Sorts Of Trees, And Abounds In Excellent Water.

This part of India produces but little rice, which is a principal article of food in these parts, as wheat is with us; but it procures abundance of that and all other kinds of provisions from other countries.

The city is large, but the dwellings consist only of straw huts; their idol temples, and chapels, and the kings palace excepted, which are: built of stone and lime and covered with tiles; for, by their laws, no others are permitted to build their houses of any other material than straw. At this time, Calicut was inhabited by idolaters of many sects, and by many Moorish merchants, some of whom were so rich as to be owners of fifty ships. These ships are made without nails, their planks being sewed together with ropes of _cayro_, made of the fibres of the cocoa-nut husk, pitched all over, and are flat-bottomed, without keels. Every winter there are at least six hundred ships in this harbour, and the shore is such, that their ships can be easily drawn up for repairs.

"The subjects of the following digression are so intimately connected with the first establishment of the Portuguese in India, as to justify its introduction in this place, which will greatly elucidate the narrative of Castaneda; and its length did not admit of being inserted in the form of notes. It is chiefly due to the ingenious and Reverend James Stanier Clarke, in his Origin and Progress of Maritime Discovery, extracted by him from various sources."

"The name of this country, Malabar, is said to be derived from _ulyam_, which signifies, in the original language of that part of India, _skirting the bottom of the hills_, corrupted into Maleyam or Maleam, whence probably came Mulievar, and Mala-bar. In a MS. account of Malabar, it is said that little more than 2300 years ago, the sea came up to the foot of the _Sukien_ mountains, or the western _gauts_. The emerging of the country from the waters is fabulously related to have been occasioned by the piety or penitence of Puresram Rama, who prayed to _Varauna_, the God of the ocean, to give him a track of land to bestow on the Bramins. Varauna accordingly commanded the sea to withdraw from the _Gowkern_, a hill near Mangalore, all the way to Cape Comorin; which new land long remained marshy and scarcely habitable, and the original settlers were forced to abandon it on account of the numerous serpents by which it was infested: But they afterwards returned, being instructed to propitiate the serpents by worshipping them."

"At first this country was divided into four _Tookrees_ or provinces, these into _Naadhs_ or districts, and these again into _Khunds_ or small precincts. The Bramins established a kind of republican or aristocratical government, under a few principal chiefs; but jealousies and disturbances taking place, they procured a _Permaul_ or chief governor from the prince of Chaldesh, a sovereignty in the southern Carnatic:

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