This King Of The Pepper Country Is Probably Meant For The
Rajah Of Travancore.
The great river of the text is merely a sound,
which reaches along the coast from Cochin to beyond Coulan, a distance
of above 90 miles, forming a long range of low islands on the sea-coast,
and receiving numerous small rivers from the southern gauts.
- E.]
The king of Cochin has small power in comparison with the other
sovereigns of India as he is unable to send above 70,000 men into the
field. He has a great number of gentlemen, some of whom are called
_Amochi_[145] and others _Nairs_. These two sorts of men do not value
their lives in any thing which tends to the honour of their king, and
will run freely into any danger in his service, even if sure to lose
their lives in the attempt. These men go naked from the waist upwards,
and barefooted, having only a cloth wrapped about their thighs. Their
hair is long and rolled up on the top of their heads, and they go always
armed, carrying bucklers and naked swords. The Nairs have their wives in
common among themselves, and when any of them goes into the house of one
of these women, he leaves his sword and buckler at the door, and while
he is within no other dare enter the house. The king's children never
inherit the kingdom after their fathers, lest perchance they may have
been begotten by some other man; wherefore the son of the king's
sisters, or of some female of the royal-blood succeeds, that they may be
sure of having a king of the royal family. Those Naires and their wives
have great holes in their ears by way of ornament, so large and wide as
is hardly credible, holding that the larger these holes are, so much the
more noble are they. I had leave from one of them to measure the
circumference of the hole in one of his ears with a thread; and within
that circumference I put my arm up to the shoulder with my clothes on,
so that in fact they are monstrously large. This is begun when they are
very young, at which time a hole is made in each ear, to which they hang
a piece of gold or a lump of lead, putting a certain leaf into the hole
which causes the hole to increase prodigiously. They load ships at
Cochin both for Portugal and Ormuz: but all the pepper that is carried
to Ormuz is smuggled. Cinnamon and all other spices and drugs are
permitted to be exported to Ormuz or Cambaia, as likewise all other
kinds of merchandise from other parts of India. From Cochin there are
sent yearly to Portugal great quantities of pepper, dry and preserved
ginger, wild cinnamon, areka nuts and large store of cordage made of
_cayro_, that is from the bark of the cocoa-nut tree, which is reckoned
better than that made of hemp.
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