This Is The Gum Of A Tree Not Much Unlike Our Walnut Tree[95]. In Pedier I Saw In One

Street not less than 500 bankers or exchangers of money; and at this place they make many curious works, such

As fine baskets garnished with gold, which were sold for two crowns each[96]. This is a famous mart to which innumerable merchants resort. The inhabitants wear mantles of silk, and _syndones_? made of cotton.

[Footnote 94: It is impossible to determine from the account in the text what is meant by these articles of sweet scent under the names of _aloes, laserpitium, belzoe, calampat, luba_, and _bochor_; all of which seem to be different names of the same substance in different degrees of quality, and assuredly not the drugs now known by the name of _aloes_ and _benzoin_. There is a sweet-scented wood in the east known by the name of _lignum aloes_, and possibly the sweet gum called _belzoe_ may have been extracted from it, or from that which produces the oil of rhodium. - E.]

[Footnote 95: Gum lac, long believed the gum of a tree, is now known to be the work of insects, serving as a nidus for their young, in the same manner as bees wax is used by the honey bee. - E.]

[Footnote 96: Perhaps filagree work? - E.]

This country has plenty of wood fit for the construction of ships. Those which they build are of a strange fashion, named _gunchos_ or junks, having three masts with two stems and two sterns, having _gouvernals_ or rudders on both. "When sailing on the ocean and having given their sails to the wind, if it be afterwards needful to have more sails, not changing the first they go backwards without turning the ship and using only one mast[97]." The natives are most expert swimmers, and have a wonderful contrivance for producing fire in an instant. Their houses are very low and built of stone, and instead of tiles or thatch they are covered by the hide of a fish called _tartaruca_! which is found in that part of the Indian sea, which is so huge a monster that one of their skins which I saw weighed 330 pounds. There are likewise serpents in this country much larger than those at Calicut.

[Footnote 97: This account of the mode of navigation is inexplicable, or at least obscure. Perhaps it is meant to express that they do not tack, but sail with either end foremost as suits the change of wind or direction of the ship. - E.]

At this place our Christian friends, meaning to prosecute their own affairs, proposed to take their leave of us, but my Persian companion spoke to them in this manner; "Though my friends I am not your countryman, yet being all brethren and the children of Adam, I take God to witness that I love you as if you were of my own blood, and children of the same parents, and considering how long we have kept company together in a loving manner, I cannot think of parting from you without much grief of mind:

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